But the intellectual power of the Gettysburg Address is deliberately borrowed from America’s founding documents. The style was Lincoln’s, with a little help from the King James Bible (“fourscore and seven years ago” echoes Psalm 90:10). What more is there to say about America’s most famous speech? Maybe this: that it was not meant to be unique. For the smoothness of its music, the gravity of its occasion and the conciseness of its 272 words, the Gettysburg Address occupies a unique position in American oratory. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa. 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.On Nov. 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. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.īut, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. 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. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. 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.
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