One hundred and 50 years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most famous speeches in United States history.
On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln was at the dedication of the new cemetery for the Union soldiers who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg, which had occurred in July of that year.
During the three-day battle, the Union Army repelled the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia as it made a second invasion attempt of the north.
But that Union victory came at a high price; historians estimate there was a total of 51,000 casualties between the two armies. Some of those men were laid to rest in graves not far from where they fell on the battlefield, leading to the decision to institute a cemetery there.
David Wills, the man credited with being the driving force behind the cemetery's establishment, personally invited the president to come and speak at the dedication ceremony and “formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”
Lincoln accepted, and made the trip to Pennsylvania.
Following a two-hour speech by orator Edward Everett, Lincoln would speak for just two minutes.
“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.”
For more on the address and how it evolved, visit http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/entity/%2Fm%2F037yx?v.filter=exhibits .