practice news story #6: SPEECH

The Gettysburg Address
Posted: 6:00 p.m. ET, November 19, 1863

GETTYSBURG, PA- Our President of this great nation spoke today. He dedicated a portion of the battlefield to all of the soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom. It was about 4:00 p.m. on Nov. 19, when he told the crowd of about 15,000 people that this is a “Final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”

In a post interview with the President, he said that this is a great turning point in this civil war. He said that if this advancement wasn’t stopped in Gettysburg the North would have been taken over.

In his speech he spoke of the living to “Be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” In the post interview he referred to the unfinished work as an ongoing battle for our liberties. He said, “There will be many more who die in protection of these liberties.”

He said also in his post interview that unity for this nation will be a long-term effort. He did not want to discuss militarily want will be happening next be he has hopes that this battle will be done within a year.

At the end of the interview he ended things by saying, “It’s a somber day today…there’s solemnity and hope, we can draw strength from those that paid the ultimate price.”

Please refer to the attached Gettysburg Address to review his speech.

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.

Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the so-called "Bliss Copy," one of several versions which Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final version. For additional versions, you may search The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln through the courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association.