1 - Historical Puzzles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 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 gave their lives, that that nation might live. …
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 that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln, November 18, 1863It was written, rumor has it, on the back of an envelope during the train ride from Washington on the day of the speech, and it took Abraham Lincoln less than two minutes to read the full text of his address to the people gathered at the cemetery just outside Gettysburg on that fall day in 1863. Intending only to say a few words to commemorate the efforts of those who died at Gettysburg and to encourage those who were carrying on the fight, Lincoln provided history with an eloquent and succinct statement of what the conflict between Union and Confederacy was all about.
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- Conflict and CompromiseThe Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation and the American Civil War, pp. 1 - 17Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989