American History - Part 104 - Lincoln - Gettysburg Address
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-06-18

Welcome to The Making of a Nation -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America.
In November, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  He was to make a speech opening a military cemetery there.
Five months earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had marched his army up from Virginia to invade the north. The Union Army of the Potomac went after him. They met at Gettysburg in the bloodiest battle of America's Civil War.
Lincoln left Washington November eighteenth for the train ride to Gettysburg. The train stopped in Baltimore. A crowd waited to see him.
An old man came up and shook Lincoln's hand. He told the president that he had lost a son in the fighting at Gettysburg.  Lincoln said he understood the man's sorrow.
Lincoln said to the old man "When I think of the sacrifices of life still to be offered, and the hearts and homes to be made lonely before this terrible war is over, my heart is like lead. I feel at times like hiding in a deep darkness."
Lincoln arrived at Gettysburg at sundown. He had dinner. Then he went to his room to complete the speech he would give the next day. He worked for several hours. Finally, it was done.
The next morning, Lincoln-- on horseback-- led a slow parade to the new cemetery. A huge crowd waited before the place where Lincoln and the other important visitors would sit.  Military bands played. Soldiers saluted.
The ceremonies began with a prayer. Then Edward Everett rose to speak.
Everett stood silent for a moment. He looked out across the battlefield and the crowds that now covered it. He began to talk about the Civil War and what had caused it. He spoke about Lee's invasion of the north. He told how northern cities would have fallen had Lee not been stopped at Gettysburg. He praised the men who had given their lives in the great battle.
Everett spoke for almost two hours. He closed his speech with the hope that the nation would come out of the war with greater unity than ever before.
Then Lincoln stood up. He looked out over the valley, then down at the papers in his hand. He began to speak:
 "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 for 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."

The crowd applauded for several minutes. Then the people began to leave.
Lincoln turned to a friend. He said he feared his speech had been a failure. He said he should have prepared it more carefully.
Edward Everett did not agree with Lincoln. He said the president's speech was perfect. He said the president had said more in two minutes than he, Everett, had said in two hours.
Newspapers and other publications praised Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Said   "The few words of the president were from the heart, to the heart. They cannot be read without emotion."
Abraham Lincoln went back to Washington that night. He was very tired. Within a week, his secretary announced that the president was sick. He was suffering from smallpox.
Thanks to http://manythings.org for audio and text  This is a VOA product in the public domain.