Point of View

Garry Wills writes from a third person, scholarly point of view. He has very strong opinions about the Gettysburg Address and its effect on American intellectual history, but he presents his opinions as facts. Since his opinion is mixed in with historical fact, it is hard to separate the two. For instance, he writes the following factual paragraph: "The first meeting of the interstate commission was held in Altoona, where a rural architect named William Saunders was named as the perfect man to create the cemetery's layout. Saunders, trained in Scotland and employed by the Department of Agriculture, was steeped in the ideals of the "rural cemetery" movement."

Then he uses the same style of writing to present opinion, often very strong radical opinion: "Lincoln found the language, the imagery, the myths that are given their best and briefest embodiment at Gettysburg. ... Without Lincoln's knowing it...