The Gettysburg Address was delivered by President
Abraham Lincoln, on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the National
Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the bloodiest
battles of the American Civil War (July, 1863). The text of the speech
is as follows:
"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 that government of
the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth."
-- Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
