Gettysburg Address
President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the site of The Battle of Gettysburg. The United States was still in the midst of the American Civil War and Lincoln's speech was an attempt to instill hope and renew confidence in Civil War soldiers and their families.
Fast Facts
- The most famous of Abraham Lincoln's speeches
- One of the most quoted speeches in U.S. history
- Occurred just over four months after Confederate armies were defeated by those of the Union at the The Battle of Gettysburg
- Speech lasted just over two minutes
- There are at least five different written versions of the Gettysburg Address
The Speech
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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