Gettysburg Address
The nation turned its attention Tuesday toward Gettysburg, Pa., where thousands will be visiting the small town to commemorate the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous speeches in American history.
It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, four-and-a-half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg.
The battle, which left tens of thousands of men dead and missing, has often been called the turning point of the Civil War as the northern forces delivered a crushing blow to the troops of the Confederacy.
Lincoln’s address followed a two-hour speech by Edward Everett, one of the great orators of his day.
Lincoln’s speech in contrast consisted of 10 sentences and took only a little more than two minutes.
In the speech, Lincoln was able to clearly outline the reasons for the war and why it was paramount that the Union forces triumph.
The ideals Lincoln talked about still resonate today, just as much as they did 150 years ago.
As Lincoln said that day, the Civil War was not just a struggle for the Union but a fight for the principle of human equality.
Lincoln gave new meaning to those whose lives were lost at the Battle of Gettysburg, claiming their sacrifices were necessary to ensure the survival of America’s democracy.
According to historians, there is some disagreement as to the exact wording of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Transcriptions reportedly published in newspaper accounts of the event and even handwritten copies by Lincoln himself differ in their wording, punctuation and structure.
Of these versions, the following is viewed by many as the standard text and will be read today in Gettysburg.
“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 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 the 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.”