Read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 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
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 wh
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
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
How does Lincoln want his audience to feel?
Guilty for having brought the nation to war
Regretful for having lost so man of the nation's men
Optimistic about the nation's democracy and future
Relieved that there were few casualties in the war