Gettysburg Address

(Horribly misquoted in WikiRewritesHistory, with apologies to Abraham Lincoln.)

For the correct text, see the following:

http://www.saxton.com.au/Lincoln.html -- and other famous speeches

Particular attention to "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, ..." ;-)

That's a rhetorical trick. Compare [WilliamShakespeare's] MarcAntony? saying "I come to bury Caesar not to praise him."

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 battlefield 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 the larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.

A wonderfully concise summary after someone (whose name I forget) orated for an hour and a half to say essentially the same thing.

Edward Everett, who afterwards congratulated Lincoln. Lincoln, in turn, was pleased that it wasn't a complete failure.

Edward Everett was the main attraction. His job was to orate at length and entertain the crowd. Lincoln's job was different--the dedication. Each one did what was expected of him, no more, no less. Lincoln was said to have been disappointed by the quiet reception to his speech. He was sick and his voice wasn't at the top of its form, so a lot of people just didn't hear him. It's been said that many of those who did hear him were stunned into silence by the poetry of the speech.

CategoryHistory