6:15 p.m. EST November 19, 1863
GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, Nov. 19 – President Abraham Lincoln gave a public address on the battlefield, where in history the day of this great battle will be remembered as a turning point in the United States war. In attendance at 4:00 p.m. were fifteen thousand people. His dedicatory speech spoke on the fact that each individual will have an honor for the dead and “take increased devotion,” so we can better our future. Five thousand men were killed on this site. This event is history will be a memorable one for the United States. We should keep in mind, “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
President Lincoln in a post interview gave insight on how the United States will take the next steps to abolish slavery, rebuild the South, and that a unifying of this nation will take place. This unification will take years to actually take place, but as this battle has been a turning point and a victory for the Union we will begin our newest journey in bettering ourselves.
As for an actual direction from were President Lincoln plans to go from this point, he was not at liberty to say. At the same time he said, “We hope to end this war within this year.” Looking for a discontinuance of the bloodshed of these men and others will be a happy day for the United State, both the North and the South.
The feelings left at the site of the Gettysburg battlefield are to leave each of us, “with hope” and that, “other can be inspired to change.”
Complete text of President's Address is followed:
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.
.jpg)