159 Years Ago On This Day, Abe Lincoln Gave The Gettysburg Address

A big moment in the United States history was the Civil War (1861-1865). On July 1-3, 1863, the great Battle of Gettysburg was fought with the Union winning. A couple months after the battle on November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln and former Secretary of State Edward Everett gave speeches. Everett gave a long two-hour speech at the battle location. President Lincoln followed with a two-minute speech. But that two-minute speech is remembered much more than the two-hour speech. President Lincoln’s speech still applies to our country at this present time.

Speech

“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.” ^[1]