Gettysburg Address

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.

— Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address is a dedication speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, following the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The speech has come to be viewed as one of the most famous, enduring, and historically significant speeches in American history.

Lincoln delivered the speech on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, during a formal dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, on the grounds where the Battle of Gettysburg was fought four and a half months earlier, between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the battle, Union army soldiers successfully repelled and defeated Confederate forces in what proved to be the Civil War's deadliest and most decisive battle, resulting in more than 50,000 Confederate and Union army casualties in a Union victory that altered the war's course in the Union's favor.^[4][5]

The historical and enduring significance and fame of the Gettysburg Address is at least partly attributable to its brevity; it has only 271 words and read in less than two minutes before approximately 15,000 people who had gathered to commemorate the sacrifice of the Union soldiers, over 3,000 of whom were killed during the three-day battle. Lincoln began with a reference to the Declaration of Independence of 1776:

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.

He said that the Civil War was "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure". Lincoln then extolled the sacrifices of the thousands who died in the Battle of Gettysburg in defense of those principles, and he argued that their sacrifice should elevate the nation's commitment to ensuring the Union prevailed and the nation endured, famously saying:

that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom^[6]—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.^[7][8]

Despite the historical significance and fame that the speech ultimately obtained, Lincoln was scheduled to give only brief dedicatory remarks, following the main oration given by the elder statesman Edward Everett. Thus, Lincoln's closing remarks consumed a very small fraction of the day's event, which lasted for several hours. Nor was Lincoln's address immediately recognized as particularly significant. Over time, however, it came to be widely viewed as one of the greatest and most influential statements ever delivered on the American national purpose, and it came to be seen as one of the most prominent examples of the successful use of the English language and rhetoric to advance a political cause. "The Gettysburg Address did not enter the broader American canon until decades after Lincoln's death, following World War I and the 1922 opening of the Lincoln Memorial, where the speech is etched in marble. As the Gettysburg Address gained in popularity, it became a staple of school textbooks and readers, and the succinctness of the three paragraph oration permitted it to be memorized by generations of American school children," the History Channel reported in November 2024.^[9]