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The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles
Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by
President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it
a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the
world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the
Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will
never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the
speech."
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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.
