Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania , was the site of intense fighting between Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War (1861–65). Over the course of three days in July 1863, forty-three thousand soldiers lost their lives during the Battle of Gettysburg . On November 19, 1863, a national cemetery was dedicated at the Gettysburg battlefield. U.S. president Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65) was in attendance and gave a short but eloquent speech remembered as the Gettysburg Address.

President Lincoln was not the main speaker at the dedication. His speech followed that of former secretary of state Edward Everett (1794–1865), who spoke for two hours. Lincoln's address had just three hundred words and took only a few minutes to deliver. In it, he revisited themes from past speeches. He emphasized the historical union of the nation and the words of the nation's founders that all men were created equal. He urged the nation to rededicate itself to the Union cause and confirmed his own commitment to a government of, by, and for the people.

Text of the Gettysburg Address

President Abraham Lincoln spoke these words during his Gettysburg Address in November 1863:

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 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—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 the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln's words were received by a tired crowd without much enthusiasm. Some people criticized the speech, but others immediately recognized its exceptional literary merit. The eloquent and precise poetic expressions in the Gettysburg Address make it one of Lincoln's most famous speeches.