The Gettysburg AddressAbraham Lincoln

The Speaker"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all.“

- Abraham Lincoln

• He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

• As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

• Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg.

• Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war.

• Originally, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, had formulated a plan to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners.

• After attending an April 11 speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, Booth changed his plans and determined to assassinate the president.

• The assassination of Abraham Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at approximately 10:15 p.m. President Abraham Lincoln was shot attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and two guests. Lincoln died the following day at 7:22 a.m. Booth was tracked down, shot and killed by Sergeant Boston Corbett on April 26, 1865

The American Civil War• Also known as War Between States.• Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United

States and formed the Confederate States of America, also known as "the Confederacy". Led by Jefferson Davis, they fought against the United States (the Union), which was supported by all the free states (where slavery had been abolished) and by five slave states that became known as the border states

The American Civil War

Abraham LincolnThe Gettysburg Address

With the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln gave meaning to the sacrifice of the dead—he gave inspiration to the living.

It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.

IntroductionFour 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.Body of speechNow 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 a 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.

Closing remarksThe 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.