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The Gettysburg Address - Bruce Frohnen, The American Nation: Primary Sources [2008]

Edition used:

The American Nation: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008).

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


The Gettysburg Address

November 19, 1863

Abraham Lincoln

Address delivered at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.

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.

November 19, 1863.

Abraham Lincoln.

  • Message to the Congress of Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, 1864
  • Act to Increase the Military Force of the Confederate States, 1865

Founded on the doctrine of states’ rights, the Confederacy found itself engaging in increasingly centralizing conduct over the course of its unsuccessful war of secession. The armies of the Confederate states were outnumbered throughout the war, and the relative numbers became increasingly lopsided in the Union’s favor, with increasing numbers of Confederate soldiers deserting and conscription methods (never popular) becoming increasingly onerous, particularly given the much smaller white population of the Southern states. Confederate president Jefferson Davis repeatedly issued messages and speeches intended to rally the people, restating the principles of the Confederate cause and predicting eventual victory. But conditions continued to worsen, eventually leading to calls for arming African Americans. Some of these proposals included emancipation. All were resisted until very late in the war when General Robert E. Lee, among others, threw his support behind calling on slaves to provide various services to the war effort—including labor, transport, and perhaps even fighting. On February 10, 1865, Congressman Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi introduced the act reproduced here. The bill was passed on March 13, succeeding by just one vote in the Confederate Senate. The March 23 executive order implementing the act required that the Confederate government gain the approval of slaves’ masters for their military service.