![]() ![]() But he’s also looking to the future-he is looking to us. Lincoln is steeling his contemporaries for the many battles, burdens, and responsibilities still ahead. Remember, the Gettysburg Address is a wartime speech. Are we prepared to heed their example to do what is necessary to advance the founding ideals of the Declaration of Independence? Lincoln points to them, and challenges the living. ![]() Those who fought and died shouldered our nation’s enduring values through the refining fire of Gettysburg and the Civil War. 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…” Lincoln answers that question with a challenge: “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. ![]() Ironically, the world remembers what our sixteenth president said, but do we remember the actions of those who fought at Gettysburg? He even speculates that, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” As Lincoln himself knew, how could his words ever compare to that sacrifice? With their blood, they watered the tree of liberty. Rather, he explains that those who fought were the loyal guardians of the American Experiment. Lincoln is not in Gettysburg to celebrate the Union victory. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that nation might live. In three days of fighting, 51,000 Americans on both sides-Union and Confederate-were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. “We are met on a great battlefield of that war.” Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the bloodiest battle of America’s bloodiest war. And the Civil War was a trial to see if a nation based on such lofty ideals could survive. No nation was ever founded on a commitment to liberty and equality. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” In one sentence, Lincoln summarizes the American project: liberty for all and equality of all. In contrast, the Declaration of Independence declares our enduring national values. The Constitution, in forming our government, was the product of many compromises…most notably, slavery. Lincoln goes back in time-not to the signing of the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln begins this way: “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.” The North’s victory here was one of the pivotal battles of the American Civil War. He was in Gettysburg to dedicate a national military cemetery to the Union soldiers who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg four months earlier. Lincoln delivered the address on November 19, 1863. It is stunning in its brevity: ten sentences-272 words-and delivered in just over two minutes…few have said more with less. President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is one of the most famous speeches ever given. This video was produced in partnership with Prager University and made possible by a gift from a generous donor of the Civil War Trust.
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