A great speech, but take it with a grain of salt. This was the president who suspended Habeas Corpus, and ordered other executive actions that mirror the extent of actions taken by current presidents, actions that pro-Constitutionalists now oppose vehemently. In a way, he set the foundations for the overreaching federal government we currently "enjoy" and which we are very concerned will spell the end of the republic within our lifetimes.
Andrew Napolitano makes the case better than I do. Lincoln was a very good politician - manipulative, power-hungry, and very intelligent. Talk about watching what the left hand is doing while the right is acting out, Lincoln used the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation to sensationalize the Union side of the war, alienate Great Britain from the Confederacy and thus guarantee the Confederacy's downfall, and lend an air of legitimacy to an unconstitutional assault of the federal government on states that, under the U.S. Constitution, were allowed to secede voluntarily as they chose, just as they voluntarily chose to join the U.S.
The extent to which Lincoln changed the dynamics of the republic (or former republic, I should say) in the mid 19th century, is very comparable to the extent which Roosevelt altered the roles of the federal government in the 1930's/1940's, and in which Clinton, the Bushes and Obama have changed the dynamics of the smoldering remains of that republic in the 1990's - 2000's. To look on Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history, is comparable to looking at Bush, Jr. or Obama in the same light.
I hate that his speech was tainted because it came from him. He was right, in that the world will remember what those men did there. Gettysburg was the last hope and gasp of a desperate, floundering, infant nation (not dissimilar to an early 19th century U.S.) to secure its independence from an overbearing foreign power that would not leave it alone. After the battle, the Confederacy was unable to regain the strength it needed to meet all the threats of Union armies and defend its sovereignty, eventually forced to capitulate, free states forcibly subdued by an overbearing federal government.
In all fairness, though, Jefferson Davis also implemented executive actions in the Confederacy to support the war effort, actions that Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia opposed vigorously and which caused Brown to consider getting Georgia to secede from the Confederacy.
