Four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a cemetery for the Union dead was dedicated there, on November 19, 1863. The main speaker, Edward Everett, spoke for about two hours. Then President Lincoln rose to offer "a few appropriate remarks." He had issued the Emancipation Proclamation that January.
Key idea
In about 272 words, spoken in about two minutes, Lincoln described the war as a test of whether a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could endure. He asked the living to finish the work of the dead, so "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."
Why it works
Why does so short a speech matter so much? Lincoln counted back "four score and seven years" (87 years) from 1863 to 1776, not to 1787. He dated the nation from the Declaration of Independence and its promise of equality, not from the Constitution, which had protected slavery. In that light, the war was being fought not only to save the Union but to give it "a new birth of freedom."
Worked example: Do the arithmetic
What year is "four score and seven years" before 1863, and what happened then?
- A score is twenty. Four score is 4 × 20 = 80.
- Add seven: 80 + 7 = 87 years.
- Count back from 1863: 1863 − 87 = 1776.
- 1776 is the year of the Declaration of Independence, whose words "all men are created equal" Lincoln quotes next.
Answer: 1776, the Declaration of Independence.
Common mistake
Two legends: that the speech was long, and that Lincoln wrote it on the back of an envelope on the train. It took about two minutes. He prepared drafts beforehand, at the White House, and five copies in his own hand survive, named for the people who received them: Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft and Bliss. They differ slightly in wording. Check: the envelope story has no evidence behind it.
The famous last line mirrors the opening: a nation "conceived" in 1776 needed a "new birth." The words are carved on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.