By Stan Nnalue
By: Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President.
Reason: To honour the soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War and to reaffirm the principles of human equality.
Location: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
Date: November 19, 1863.
Effect: Though initially underappreciated, it is now
regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history, encapsulating the
ideals of democracy and freedom.
The full speech
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
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
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