Lincoln merged the classic requirements of Greek oration, the Divine Providence of Transcendentalists, and the strategic method of a trial lawyer to lay out his own version of Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” for the United States of the future. Hidden in a five-minute speech were the phrases that swept away 80 years of constitutional avoidance of the sin of slavery, repeated statutory compromises which muddled and delayed the conflict until only massive destruction would begin the atonement – requiring the total abolition of slavery as a condition for peace.