LAD #15

The Battle of Gettysburg is one of the deadliest battles in American history. After the battle Lincoln delivered his famous speech, the Gettysburg Address on the location.

To begin the speech Abe Lincoln reminds the crowd that not long ago our founding fathers developed a new nation based on liberty and freedom. He then states that the Civil War is a test to see if this nation can endure a war or not. Lincoln then says that he is dedicating a piece of the Gettysburg battlefield to act as a graveyard for those men who fought to preserve that nation. He then says that the men who fought and died on this field have made it sacred, and that we can do nothing to make it more or less so. Lincoln closes the short speech by saying that the men who died will not have died in vain. That they died for a "nation, under God, (that) 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."