The Battle of Gettysburg, one of the most noted battles of the Civil War, was
                                 fought on July 1?3, 1863. On Nov. 19, 1863, the field was dedicated as a
                                 national cemetery by President Lincoln in a two-minute speech that was to
                                 become immortal. At the time of its delivery the speech was relegated to the
                                 inside pages of the papers, while a two-hour address by Edward Everett, the
                                 leading orator of the time, caught the headlines.

                                 The following is the text of the address revised by President Lincoln from his
                                 own notes:

                                           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.