On this day in 1863, according to the Associated Press, "President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania."
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Delivered at the site of the Civil War battlefield
of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania
on November 19, 1863,
by Abraham Lincoln
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 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, and for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
Source: Poems Old and New (1957), selected for boys and girls by Helen Farris
