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Today in history: November 19
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1794: The Jay Treaty was signed with Britain, fulfilling President Washington's goal of avoiding another war with Great Britain. The Jay Treaty was named for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, whom President Washington dispatched to London to negotiate with the British.
November 19, 1831: James Garfield was born. He was the 20th president, serving six months before his assassination in 1881. Garfield became the second president to be assassinated (there have been four).
November 19, 1863: Abraham Lincoln gave what is arguably the greatest of all presidential speeches — the 271-word Gettysburg Address. The speech, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, site of a pivotal Civil War battle four months earlier, took just over two minutes to deliver, but summed up, in Lincoln's characteristic eloquence and brevity, why the war was being waged. Lincoln emphasized the principles of human equality and said the Union would be preserved with "a new birth of freedom."
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"Four score and seven years ago," Lincoln began, referring to the 87 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed during the Revolutionary War, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
The president continued:
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on the great battlefield 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 the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this."
"But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not 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."
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Quote of the Day
"This government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." -Abraham Lincoln
