Overview
- President Abraham Lincoln delivered the speech on November 19, 1863 at the Soldiers' National Cemetery dedication in Gettysburg, four months after the July 1–3 battle.
- Prominent orator Edward Everett gave a two-hour keynote, and Lincoln was invited to offer “a few appropriate remarks.”
- The address ran about 271 words and lasted under three minutes before an audience of roughly 15,000 people.
- Lincoln grounded national purpose in the Declaration of Independence’s equality ideal and called for a “new birth of freedom.”
- Reporting highlights five handwritten Lincoln copies—two held by the Library of Congress—and the text inscribed at the Lincoln Memorial, while casualty summaries vary between over 3,500 Union dead and more than 7,000 bodies overall.