Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

On July 1st, 1863, Union and Confederate forces met in a field near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and for three days fought the most terrible battle of the Civil War. When the fighting ended on July 3rd, 50,000 bodies littered the battlefield.

Andrew Curtin, the governor of Pennsylvania, gave a local judge, David Wills, the unenviable assignment of cleaning up the grisly aftermath. The bloated corpses of thousands of men and horses were densely strewn across the landscape. Wills quickly acquired seventeen acres of the battlefield for a national cemetery, and began the task of burying the dead.

When the grisly job was finished, Wills invited the famous orator, Edward Everett, to speak at the dedication of the cemetery. He also wrote to President Lincoln and invited him to say a few words as well. Both men accepted.

Everett spoke for more than two hours. When he finished his long-forgotten, long-winded speech, Abraham Lincoln stood and said his few words - 237, to be exact - leaving the audience stunned at the brevity of his remarks. That short speech, now know as the Gettysburg Address, has lived on as one of the greatest speeches ever written.

Abraham Lincoln's Speech at the
Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 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 this 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 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.