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Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Known for shepherding the Union through the Civil War, Lincoln was a transformative president who preserved the Union and ended slavery. One of his most famous speeches (and one of the most famous speeches of all time) was the Gettysburg Address, given on the battlefield to honor the many soldiers who died there. At the time, Lincoln’s young son Tad was suffering from symptoms similar to Typhoid fever, which had killed another of Lincoln’s young sons the year before, and Mary Todd, his wife, was recovering from a head injury. Against his wife’s advice to stay home with their ailing son, Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to speak at the cemetery dedication. In Lincoln’s day, it was not customary for presidents to address the general public directly in the way presidents do so frequently today. Nevertheless, Lincoln used his mastery of language and persuasion to inspire his country, boost support for the war, and prepare the public for the possibility of more violence. He taught the audience listening to his address (and the many who would read the speech in newspapers the next day) how to make sense of the bloodshed: Lincoln defined the Civil War as a test of democratic American values, a test that would determine whether a country committed to freedom, equality, and liberty could survive.
Abraham Lincoln Quotes in The Gettysburg Address
The The Gettysburg Address quotes below are all either spoken by Abraham Lincoln or refer to Abraham Lincoln. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Gettysburg Address
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Fourscore and seven years ago...
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…our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground.
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The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
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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 here 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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Get the entire The Gettysburg Address LitChart as a printable PDF.
Abraham Lincoln Quotes in The Gettysburg Address
The The Gettysburg Address quotes below are all either spoken by Abraham Lincoln or refer to Abraham Lincoln. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Gettysburg Address
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Fourscore and seven years ago...
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…our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground.
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The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
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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 here 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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