How does Abraham Lincoln’s phrase “of the people, by the people, for the people” use parallelism?

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Louisa May Alcott: Little Women — figure of speech Front cover of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel *Little Women*.

Abraham Lincoln’s famous phrase from the Gettysburg Address, "of the people, by the people, for the people," is a classic example of parallelism.

In rhetoric, parallelism involves arranging coordinate ideas in phrases or sentences that balance elements of equal importance using similar grammatical structures. Lincoln’s phrase utilizes this technique by repeating the prepositional structure "of/by/for the people" three times.

By maintaining this consistent rhythm and structure, the phrase orders and emphasizes the democratic ideal, lending it both authority and memorability. Just as other examples of parallelism—such as Francis Bacon’s "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man"—use repeated structures to highlight relationships between ideas, Lincoln uses this repetition to reinforce the connection between the government and the citizenry.1