Why Is The Gettysburg Address Is Important On The World Stage? America, On This Day In HistoryThe Gettysburg Address | 158th Anniversary

Lincoln At Gettysburg

Supposedly a Matthew Bradley image of Lincoln at Gettysburg.

In a masterly speech Lincoln reached back to the Declaration of Independence to write the greatest speech in the nation’s history. A speech that inspired others worldwide to shake off the shackles of slavery.

On this date November 19, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Take a minute today to read it:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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 battle-field 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 that 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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Many nations were watching to see how this war would turn out. Of course, the wealthy and noblemen were rooting for the South and the common people, servants, serfs and slaves were rooting for the North. The North and the Abolitionists winning was viewed a turn in world history. Many looked at it through the world’s lenses as an inspiration. That people can change their fate if they want to change it badly enough: inspiring those in slavery worldwide to rise up and end colonization and slavery. Even inspired the end of the remaining of serfdom.