Learn Our History Today: On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address. The speech was delivered in dedication of a military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - the site of the American Civil War’s deadliest battle, where in just three days, close to 50,000 men were killed or wounded. For the ceremony commemorating the opening of the cemetery, famous orator Edward Everett was invited to give an address to the crowd. President Lincoln was also invited, but almost as an afterthought. For two hours the crowd gathered at the ceremony listened to Everett speak, when Lincoln’s turn came along, he spoke for only three minutes. These were Lincoln’s words: “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.”
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 18:31:05 +0000
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