Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Given November 19, 1863 on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
1863
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Given November 19, 1863 on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
1863
It is 272 words. Abraham Lincoln spoke them in two minutes. Yet the Gettysburg Address has done more to define the promise and peril of American democracy than any document in the nation's history. Delivered on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a cemetery for soldiers killed in the Civil War's bloodiest battle, Lincoln's speech does not simply honor the dead. It redefines why they died. In ten sentences, the president transforms a war to preserve the Union into a test of whether a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" can endure. The language is plain. The stakes are everything. And the final invocation that democratic government "of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" remains, over a century later, either a warning or a promise. This is a text meant to be read slowly, aloud, more than once. It is brief enough to memorize and profound enough to spend a lifetime pondering.
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“Fourscore 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.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“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 battlefield 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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”
— Abraham Lincoln
“. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom”
— Abraham Lincoln
“...THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION;...””
— Abraham Lincoln
“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 this earth.””
— Abraham Lincoln
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Lincoln, Abraham. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Given November 19, 1863 on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Lex, lex-books.com/book/lincoln-s-gettysburg-address-given-november-19-1863-on-the-battlefield-near-gett-c4750fe6-1c27-41d4-ad1b-ea157b65823f.Lincoln, A. (1863). Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Given November 19, 1863 on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/lincoln-s-gettysburg-address-given-november-19-1863-on-the-battlefield-near-gett-c4750fe6-1c27-41d4-ad1b-ea157b65823fLincoln, Abraham. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Given November 19, 1863 on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/lincoln-s-gettysburg-address-given-november-19-1863-on-the-battlefield-near-gett-c4750fe6-1c27-41d4-ad1b-ea157b65823f.
