Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863)

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (19 November 1863)

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Often simply called "The Speech" among speechwriters, Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" is not only a marvel of concinnity and plainspoken grace, but also a model of a message that transcends the mundane and immediate to touch on points universal and grand. Delivered on 19 November 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers Cemetery on the grounds of the Battle of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania), during which some seven thousand Americans killed one another, Lincoln's 272-word address was not even the keynote. The honor of delivering that fell to the noted public orator Edward Everett, whose impassioned, classical rhetoric rang across the recently cleared battlefield for almost two hours. Shortly after, Everett would tell Lincoln, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Lincoln's speech came at an opportune moment, one many historians consider a turning point in the American Civil War, and it was instantly regarded as a profound work of American political and literary genius.

Laura M. Miller,
Vanderbilt University

See also Civil War ; Gettysburg Address .

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. 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 the 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—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.

SOURCE: Lincoln, Abraham. Writings of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Lamb, 1905–06.