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The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9
Contents:
V
The Speech at Gettysburg*
(1863)
Fourscore 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 have come to dedicate a portion of that field2 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 poor3 power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we sayhere, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which4 they who fought here 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 these5 dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall6 have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
*Delivered at the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, after Edward Everett had made the formal speech of the day. Printed here in textual conformity to the copy which Lincoln wrote out in his own hand for a soldiers’ and sailors’ fair, held in Baltimore in 1864.
2The Associated Press report, as taken down in shorthand and printed the day after this speech was delivered, here reads, "We are met to dedicate a portion of it."
3The Associated Press version omits "poor."
4The Associated Press version reads, "That they have thus far so nobly carried on."
5The Associated Press version has "the" for "these".
6The Associated Press version reads, "’That the nation shall, under God."
Contents:
Chicago: Abraham Lincoln, "V. The Speech at Gettysburg (1863)," The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9 in The World’s Famous Orations, ed. William Jennings Bryan (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, December, 1906), 255. Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RV4Y5YB85A61AUN.
MLA: Lincoln, Abraham. "V. The Speech at Gettysburg (1863)." The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9, in The World’s Famous Orations, edited by William Jennings Bryan, Vol. The World#8217;s Famous Orations, New York, Funk and Wagnalls, December, 1906, page 255. Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RV4Y5YB85A61AUN.
Harvard: Lincoln, A, 'V. The Speech at Gettysburg (1863)' in The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. 9. cited in December, 1906, The World’s Famous Orations, ed. , Funk and Wagnalls, New York, pp.255. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=RV4Y5YB85A61AUN.
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