Four Score and Seven Years Ago

President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address on this date in 1863.

The small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, waged during the first three days of July 1863. More than 51,000 soldiers were killed before the Union's Army of the Potomac turned back General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North.

Lincoln's speech was delivered four months later during the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. The final paragraph of this moving address accompanies William H. Johnson's painting, Lincoln at Gettysburg II.

"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."

Pictured: William H. Johnson, 1901–1970, Lincoln at Gettysburg II, about 1939–42, gouache and pen and ink on paper, 19 3/4 x 17 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.