Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address during the dedication of the cemetery for Union soldiers who fought and died in the Battle of Gettysburg. In the address, Lincoln expressed the great need for Americans to remember the sacrifice made by these soldiers.
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.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Answer the following questions in complete sentences.
1. Why do you think Lincoln started out talking about the past and our fathers?
2. For what cause(s) did President Lincoln believe the United States soldiers were fighting during the Civil War?
3. According to Lincoln, how does a nation make sure that free governments (democracies) "shall not perish from the earth"?
4. According to Lincoln, what do the American people have to do to make sure that the U.S. soldiers who were killed at Gettysburg (and other battlefields) had not died "in vain"?
5. What do you think Lincoln meant by the phrase "...government of the people, by the people, for the people..."?
6. What happened to the United States after its success at Gettysburg and Vicksburg? What happened to the Confederacy?
7. What do you think will happen next? Do you think the Union will continue to win important battles, or do you think Lee will rally a viable force? Do you think the West will recover?
8. Why do you think Americans feel as though The Gettysburg Address still speaks to them today? Do you think this is an eternal document? Why?
