Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


    US Remembering Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address at Height of Civil War

   The United States is remembering one of history`s most famous speeches,
   President Abraham Lincoln`s Gettysburg Address 150 years ago Tuesday,
   which called on his war-torn nation to renew its quest for freedom and
   equality for all.
   Lincoln`s speech on November 19, 1863, was in the midst of the
   country`s Civil War. It was a bitter fight between a group of Southern
   states seeking to secede from the national union of states, largely
   over the Southern practice of slave ownership. The United States at the
   time was only 87 years old after declaring its independence from
   England.
   Lincoln, the country`s 16th president, said in the two-minute speech
   that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here"
   at the battlefield in the hamlet of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In fact,
   generations of American school children have memorized it.
   One U.S. historian, Carolyn Eastman of Virginia Commonwealth
   University, told VOA the speech is the "greatest piece of oratory ever
   given by a U.S. president" and says its message resonates beyond the
   United States.
   "One of the most beautiful things it does is again remind us how
   important it is to seek freedom and even the worst things, the loss of
   life and limb, can be worth the quest for freedom."
   Lincoln defended the creation of the union of states in fighting
   through much of the southern part of the country that lasted from 1861
   to 1865, before the secessionists surrendered, with the United States
   preserved.
   One of the key turning points of the war occurred in Gettysburg, where
   the leader of the secessionists, General Robert E. Lee, commanded his
   troops in early July 1863 in their most ambitious foray into the
   northern part of the country. But after three days of fierce fighting
   -- and about 50,000 casualties -- Union troops repelled Lee`s forces in
   a battle American historians say was the decisive turn in the war for
   the North.
   Nearly four months later, Lincoln gave his speech at the battlefield,
   an oratory that some newspaper accounts at the time derided as "silly"
   and irrelevant. He recalled the country`s 1776 Declaration of
   Independence, saying the Battle of Gettysburg and other Civil War
   encounters would test whether any nation founded on the principle of
   freedom "can long endure."
   Lincoln called on his countrymen to not only honor those who died at
   Gettysburg, but said the United States "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."
   Historian Eastman said Lincoln effectively was reminding his countrymen
   that the preservation of the new country and the end to slavery were
   worth fighting for.
   "In many ways, what he was doing was giving the war a new meaning, a
   meaning that reflected his own change of mind during the course of the
   war, and really install into peoples` minds the notion that the end of
   slavery was something that mattered."
   Several hundred people gathered at Gettysburg Tuesday to recall the
   speech and reflect on what it still means to the country.
   ///
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/us-remembering-lincolns-1863-gettysbu
   rg-address-at-height-of-civil-war/1793314.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/us-remembering-lincolns-1863-gettysburg-address-at-height-of-civil-war/1793314.html