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Gettysburg Address: A Call for Unity

Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg. In the address, Lincoln frames the Civil War as a test of whether the United States, "conceived in Liberty," can endure. Lincoln calls those in attendance to dedicate themselves to continuing the unfinished work of preserving the nation and ensuring that the soldiers' deaths were not in vain.

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29K views1 page

Gettysburg Address: A Call for Unity

Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg. In the address, Lincoln frames the Civil War as a test of whether the United States, "conceived in Liberty," can endure. Lincoln calls those in attendance to dedicate themselves to continuing the unfinished work of preserving the nation and ensuring that the soldiers' deaths were not in vain.

Uploaded by

aroche
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VII, edited by Roy P. Basler.

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