The shortest and deservedly most famous of Lincoln’s public addresses, the Gettysburg Address was written in response to David Wills’s invitation to make “a few appropriate remarks” at the dedication of the new Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The bloody Battle of Gettysburg had concluded only four months earlier, with a costly victory for the Union. Lincoln had come to believe that the Civil War was being fought not only to preserve the Union but to redeem the promise of the key “proposition” of the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.”

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 battle-field 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.