The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863
Lincoln's two-minute dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, one of the most quoted speeches in American history.
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About this text
Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a national cemetery for soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg four months earlier; his remarks lasted about two minutes and followed a much longer oration by the day's featured speaker, Edward Everett, who is said to have told Lincoln afterward that he wished he'd come as close to the heart of the matter in two hours as Lincoln had in two minutes.
The speech is built on a repeated three-part rhythm — "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow" and "of the people, by the people, for the people" — a pattern that shows up throughout classical and political oratory. Copying those triads exactly, in order, makes their rhythm physical in a way that reading silently doesn't always achieve.
What to watch for
- 4 semicolons: a semicolon joins two complete thoughts that belong together, a pause longer than a comma but shorter than a period.
- Capital letters in the middle of a sentence: God. Ask why each one is capitalized before typing it.
- Longest word: "proposition" (11 letters). Try spelling it aloud once before reaching it.
- 9 lines averaging about 30 words each. Long lines: a younger child may do half the text per sitting.
Full text (reference)
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 on a great battle field of that war; we are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of 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 to 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on.
It is rather for us here to be 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 the dead shall not have died in vain.
That the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.