The Gettysburg Address, 1863

In brief

Delivered on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, some four and a half months after the battle. Lincoln wrote out several copies, which differ slightly in wording; this is the version that includes the phrase "under God."

Lincoln begins by dating the nation from the Declaration, "fourscore and seven years ago," when the fathers brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The Civil War, he says, is a test of whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The speech turns to the purpose of the day. The audience has come to dedicate part of the battlefield as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that the nation might live. In a larger sense, Lincoln says, the living cannot dedicate, consecrate or hallow the ground, because the men who struggled there have already consecrated it far above anyone's poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what is said there, but it can never forget what they did.

He ends by turning the task to those still alive: to be dedicated to the unfinished work the dead have so nobly advanced, to take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, and to resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the 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.

Key passages

Fourscore 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.

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.

Why it matters now

The address ties the Union cause to the founding principle of equality, and it frames the war as the unfinished work of the Declaration. It is also a model of civic speech in its brevity, its modesty about the speaker's role and its appeal to the living to carry on the work the dead had advanced.

The full text

Fourscore 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 that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.