Seven Score and Five Years ago...

On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln addressed the audience of around 15,000 at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hot on the heels of the more-than-two-hour speech delivered by Orator Edward Everett that was officially the dedicatory speech for the cemetery, Lincoln delivered his 277 word speech, eulogizing the dead soldiers and re-affirming the civil war effort. Though he thought his words would be quickly forgotten, this Gettysburg Address has survived as one of the most enduring speeches in history. It marked a turning point in the nation's sentiment for both the war and the emancipation of the slaves.

Earlier this month, seven score and five years later, America elected her first black president in Barack Obama.

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.