Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a soldiers’ cemetery, is a brief but towering reflection on why a nation might be worth dying for. Where Pericles praised the glory and cultural excellence of Athens, Lincoln roots American sacrifice in a moral “proposition” — that all men are created equal — and in the hope of a “new birth of freedom.” In just a few sentences, he shifts the focus from honor and fame to equality, self-government, and unfinished work. The dead at Gettysburg, he insists, consecrate the nation’s resolve that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”