November 19, 1863--Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

It was on this day 149 years ago when Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery--four months after the bloodiest battle ever in the western hemisphere was fought in the southern Pennsylvania town and the surrounding area.

Pictured on the right is the Gettysburg Address monument that once was situated on the grounds of the since-closed Walnut High School in Bureau County, Illinois.

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.

Related Lincoln posts:

• Thirty hours in Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois
• "My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place"
• Abraham Lincoln birthplace site
• The only statue of Lincoln in military dress is in Dixon, Illinois
• Abraham Lincoln birthplace site's log cabin
• Jonesboro, site of the third Lincoln-Douglas Debate
• Book review: Andrew Ferguson's "Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America"
• 150 years ago: Civil War begins
• Johnny Cash recites the Gettysburg Address

Related Walnut post:

Ronald Reagan Trail: Walnut