The Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address

• The speech was delivered on the occasion of dedicating a portion of the battlefield as a final resting place for the soldiers who died fighting for the nation.
• The United States was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
• The country is engaged in a great civil war to test whether a nation conceived in Liberty can long endure.
• The speech was delivered on a great battlefield of the civil war.
• The brave men who struggled and died on the battlefield have consecrated the ground, making it impossible for others to add or detract from it.
• The world will not remember the speech, but it will never forget the actions of the soldiers who fought and died on the battlefield.

The Purpose of the Speech

• The speech is a call to action for the living to continue the unfinished work of the soldiers who fought and died for the nation.
• The people must be dedicated to the great task of ensuring that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
• The nation requires a new birth of freedom, and the people must take increased devotion to the cause for which the soldiers gave their lives.
• The speech concludes with a resolution that the dead shall not have died in vain, and that the nation shall continue to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.