Joe Biden chose the site of one of America’s deadliest Civil War battles to deliver a speech calling for unity, racial justice, and an end to partisanship.
“Today, we’re engaged once again in a battle for the soul of the nation,” the Democratic presidential nominee said in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, repeating his campaign slogan. “The forces of darkness, the forces of division, the forces of yesterday are pulling us apart, holding us down, and holding us back.”
This is not a matter of a mere difference of opinion, Biden said. He warned: “Too many Americans seek not to overcome our divisions, but to deepen them.”
The former vice president was very invested in the message. Earlier in the day, Biden told attendees at a virtual fundraiser that he “worked on this speech very, very, very hard.”
The decision to deliver the speech at Gettysburg evoked an obvious comparison to President Abraham Lincoln, who gave a famous speech on the battlefield. Biden mentioned Lincoln and also former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Once again, we are a house divided. But that, my friends, can no longer be. We are facing too many crises. We have too much work to do. We have too much work to do to have it be shipwrecked on the shoals of hate and anger and division,” Biden said.
Biden made his call for unity without directly naming President Trump. But it was not apolitical: He urged people to vote in the 2020 election.
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Much of the speech contained many of Biden’s points that he often repeats on the campaign trail.
Racial justice and combating white supremacy were major themes of Biden’s speech. He mentioned speaking to the daughter of George Floyd, the black Minneapolis man whose death after being held under a white police officer’s knee sparked international Black Lives Matter protests this summer.
“I think about what it takes for a black person to love America. That is a deep love for this country that has, for far too long, never been recognized,” Biden said.
At times, Biden struck a hopeful note.
“We fought a Civil War that would secure our union,” Biden said. “And by fits and starts, our better angels have prevailed against, just enough, against our worst impulses to make a new and better nation. And those better angels can prevail again now.”
But in the end, it was a campaign speech, implying that the path to unity starts with putting Biden in the White House.
“It cannot be that after all this country’s been through, after all that America’s accomplished, after all the years that America’s stood as a beacon of light to the world — it cannot be that here and now in 2020, we will allow the government of the people, by the people, and for the people to perish on this earth,” Biden said. “No, it cannot, and it must not. We have it in our hands the ultimate power: the power to vote.”
