Gettysburg Address
There are many reasons why Lincoln is on the five dollar bill today in the United States. He served as an outstanding president and an iconic figure during the Civil War. One of the most memorable speeches he gave in his career occurred in less than two years before his assassination. This was known as the Gettysburg Address and it happened on November 19, 1863. One of the points that Lincoln was saying in this speech is that the courageous men who fought and died here in Gettysburg should not die in vain. He felt the new America should have "a new birth of freedom" and that the "government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He gave this speech subsequent to the Battle of Gettysburg while the cemetery for the Union was being gifted to house the brave men who passed in the war. In this historic message, Lincoln was calling to attention the critical necessity for the population to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg and the gallant troops who sacrificed themselves.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us —that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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