Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
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.
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 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 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 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.
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
A historian said Friday that Americans often fail to recognize the meaning behind President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address ahead of the speech’s 150th anniversary this month.
Allen Guelzo, director of Civil War era studies at Gettysburg College and a renowned Lincoln scholar, said at the Heritage Foundation that Americans typically remember the address for its brevity or phrases like “four score and seven years ago” and “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Lincoln delivered the remarks—comprising just 272 words in 10 sentences—on Nov. 19, 1863, four-and-a-half months after the pivotal battle of Gettysburg left more than 50,000 soldiers dead or wounded. Only a third of the expected bodies had been buried at the cemetery at the time…….
…..Although 16 presidents have visited the Gettysburg cemetery to commemorate the battle and Lincoln’s words—most recently George W. Bush in 2008—the Gettysburg National Military Park announced Thursday that President Barack Obama will not attend the 150th anniversary dedication. He will be represented by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.
http://freebeacon.com/historian-americans-dont-understand-meaning-behind-gettysburg-address/