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.
UNIT 1
GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
BEFORE YOU READ
In July 1863, Union and Confederate armies fought at Gettysburg in the deadliest battle of the Civil War. Four months later, Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a cemetery for Union soldiers killed there.
Lincoln’s speech lasted about two minutes. He honored the dead, but he also explained what the war meant for equality, freedom, and democratic government.
1 · THE FOUNDING PROMISE
2 · A NATION BEING TESTED
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.
3 · THE WORK OF THE LIVING
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.