Introduction
The Gettysburg Address is a speech that was given by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in November 1863 and has become the most celebrated speech in American history.
Script
Read by Johnny Cash: “Four score and seven years ago”…so began the message of a war-weary President Abraham Lincoln. A message written on the back of an envelope on a train on the way to dedicate a battlefield where men from the North and South had died at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers 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. For 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 that last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; and 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.
Quiz
1. According to Johnny Cash, President Abraham Lincoln was exhausted from presiding over the Civil War and dealing with its consequences.Discussion
- The Gettysburg Address is an example of a very short speech that had a lasting impact in history. What are the potential risks and rewards of being so brief?
- What are some of the most important speeches in the history or your country and why are they remembered today?
- Is it very important that the leader of a nation be a strong public speaker?