272 words, 10 sentences, 2 minutes in length.
That’s all it took for President Abraham Lincoln to deliver one of the most impactful speeches in U.S. History: The Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863
A few months earlier, from July 1–3, 1863, Union and Confederate armies fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with tens of thousands killed, wounded, or missing. A new Soldiers’ National Cemetery was created to bury many of the Union soldiers who died there, and Lincoln was invited to speak at its dedication.
A well known orator, Edward Everett, gave the main speech and talked for about two hours. Lincoln then stood up and, in just a couple of minutes, delivered the 272 word Gettysburg Address. The brevity and concise remarks is one key reason that makes it such a famous speech from American Civil War history.
For kids the speech can be boiled down to 3 big ideas:
- The United States is a nation devoted to the freedom and equality of everyone
- Honor the Fallen soldiers who died at Gettysburg and gave the place its true meaning
- The living have a duty to continue to uphold these ideals of freedom and equality
If you’re using this as a “today in history” lesson: read the speech aloud and ask what parts stood out to your children. Talk briefly with your kids and what “freedom” and “equality” look like in their own lives today.
“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 can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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
November 19, 1863
Legendary stories like this are what were all about here at Letters From Legends. We love the fighting spirit which the soldiers at Gettysburg so perfectly embodied; and we are dedicated to teaching kids about American History in a fun and captivating way. History isn’t just back then; it’s the reason ‘right now’ looks the way it does.