November 19, 1863 

At the dedication of the National  Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,  President Lincoln delivers a two minute  speech. Immediately following  the speech he calls it a “flat failure.”  The speech is known today as the Gettysburg  Address.

There are actually five (or  more) versions of Lincoln’s  Gettysburg Address. This is  the version that appears on  the Lincoln Monument in  Washington, D. C. and contains  the words “under God.” This  term appears to be the most  notable difference among the five  versions. According to popular  accounts Lincoln spoke those  words. 

The Gettysburg Address

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.