Gettysburg Address 1863 Abrham Lincoln

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A new nation conceived in liberty.

         Four score and seven years ago* our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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.

         A new birth of freedom. . . government of the people, by the people

         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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

         *Editors note. A score is 20. Four score and seven years is 87 years. 87 years before Lincoln delivered this speech in 1863 was 1776. This one sentence in the speech was extremely radical and controversial when it was first published. The white, pro-slavery rebels in the south had claimed they were the "true" Americans because the United States Constitution of 1787 guaranteed the rights of slaveowners. Abraham Lincoln claimed in this Gettysburg Address that the nation was really founded with the Declaration of Independence of 1776 which recognized that "all men are created equal". Lincoln had previously argued that our Constitution of 1787 was an imperfect work in progress designed to eventually guarantee to all Americans, the of rights recognized by our Declaration of Independence in 1776. In this speech, Lincoln said that the decisive defeat of the southern rebels just before July 4, 1863 in the Battle of Gettysburg made possible "a new birth of freedom" for the United States. After Lincoln's death, this once radical view of American history was accepted as mainstream. The Constitution was formally amended in 1866 to guarantee the rights of all Americans with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Lincoln's once controversial speech at Gettysburg was then taught to and memorized by millions of American school children for more than one hundred years as a concise summation of American values. That practice was discontinued in our public schools about thirty years ago.

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