Address delivered at the dedication of the bemetery at Gettysbing. Four scose and seven years ago our fathers on this continent, a new na= brought forth and dedication to the proposition that all men are cres ated equal. engagow in a Now we are great cuire 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 dedicats a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is attor gether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedis cate- we can not consecratin we can not hallow this ground. The brave mew, live ing and dead, who struggles her have cons secrated it, for abovo own poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nov long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did hew. It is for as the living, rother, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fou= gho hew have thus far so nobly advaveed, do is rather for us to be here dedication to great task remaining before. from these honored Lead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the fast full measure of devotion_that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, birth of free the under us that God, shall have a new dom. - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not pers ish from the earth. November 19, 1863. Abraham Lincol The Standard Version.-President Lincoln's Final Revision. Photographed from the fac-simile first published in " Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors," Baltimore, 1864. WHEN WRITTEN, HOW RECEIVED, ITS TRUE FORM. BY MAJOR WILLIAM H. LAMBERT. [Read before the Commandery of the State of Pennsylvania, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, February 14, 1906; and before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, February 8, 1909.] THE most notable of the series of speeches made by Abraham Lincoln after leaving Springfield, and while on his way to Washington for his inauguration as President, was that made in this city in Independence Hall, and inspired by its sacred memories; and the most famous of his addresses as President was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg. Consideration of these remarkable utterances upon the soil of our State would seem appropriate by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at this time of commemoration of the centenary of Lincoln's birth; and your attention is in. vited to the circumstances attending the delivery of the Gettysburg Address, as described in some of the accounts of the dedication, which I present in an endeavor to determine what was the origin of the address, how it was received, and what is its true form, for, strange as it may VOL. XXXIII.-25 (385) |