Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address,delivered by Lincoln at the dedication of a national cemetery (Nov. 19, 1863) on the site of the Pennsylvania battlefield where there occurred (July 1–3, 1863) the action that is considered the turning point of the Civil War. Lincoln's speech of three brief paragraphs, following a two-hour address by the principal orator, Edward Everett, was considered unimportant at the time, but has come to be viewed as one of the noblest and most significant expressions of American democracy. Calling for “increased devotion to that cause” for which the Gettysburg dead “gave the last full measure of devotion,” he stated that the aim of the Civil War was to make possible “a new birth of freedom … that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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