November 19, 1863 – Abraham Lincoln “Gettysburg Address”
- MP3 – read by Jeff Daniels – 2.31 Megs
- MP3 – read by Sam Waterston – 672 KB
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Note: This version is known as the “Bliss” copy, the widely adopted version of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
However, this was a copy written after November 19, a gift from Lincoln to Colonel Alexander Bliss. The original of the Bliss version is now in the Lincoln Room of the White House.
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Fourscore 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.