The Only Known Photograph of President Lincoln at the dedication of the Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863.

November 19th. What is widely considered the most memorable speech in all American history was given on this date in 1863 — when President Abraham Lincoln made what is now known as the “Gettysburg Address.” Delivered in less than two minutes, the speech dedicated 17 acres of the Pennsylvania battlefield as a national cemetery and is recognized as one of the most eloquent in the English language. Gettysburg National Cemetery continues to draw thousands of visitors each year.

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 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. 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.

Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863.

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