Lincoln #3

In November of 1863, Abraham Lincoln was invited to deliver remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. This speech is called the Gettysburg address. It is a well remembered piece of writing, and was named one of the most important speeches in history. This is how it goes:

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 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.

That is the Gettysburg Address, one of the major things Lincoln did before his death. It was to the dispute of slavery, one of the main things Lincoln stood against. The states argued for a long time over slavery and freedom until Lincoln passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, allowing freedom at last.

The Gettysburg battle was not the smartest war, but it WAS the bloodiest one by far. Many people died, and many were missed. Lincoln gave the Address 4 months after the battle was over. Not only did it honor those who had sacrificed their lives, it showed WHY they had sacrificed. Preservation of the Union, and as I said before, the end of slavery.

Lincoln, who was an inspiring writer and orator, wrote the speech himself, and though in it he said, "the world will little note nor long remember what we say here," the ten sentences of the Gettysburg Address have become among the best known, not just in America, but around the world.