One hundred sixty-three years after Abraham Lincoln stood on the battlefield at Gettysburg and delivered a speech that would become the most quoted in American history, the question remains whether the nation has truly lived up to the words that begin with “four score and seven years ago. ” In a video recorded on the battlefield itself, the creator behind the history channel History with Waffles recited the Gettysburg Address in full, standing on the ground where the dead were buried and where the fate of the Union was decided. The speech was delivered on November 19, 1863, months after the Battle of Gettysburg, when thousands of soldiers from both the North and the South had been killed or wounded in the fields surrounding the small Pennsylvania town. At the time, bodies were still being pulled from the fields and placed in a new cemetery just behind the makeshift stage where Lincoln stood.
The president was not even intended to be the main speaker that day. That role belonged to Edward Everett, a renowned orator who delivered a lengthy speech that has since been almost entirely forgotten. Lincoln’s address lasted only a few minutes, so brief that the photographer present missed the moment entirely and only captured the president sitting down with his hat off. The context of the speech matters as much as the words themselves.
Before the Civil War, the United States had been arguing for decades over what the Constitution actually meant, whether states had the right to separate from the Union, and whether slavery could expand into the new territories being added to the country. There were constant changes as the nation stretched westward, and many people resisted those changes. When Abraham Lincoln ran for president, many southern politicians feared that he and his party intended to end slavery not only in new states but in the states where it already existed. When the election results made it clear that the southern states were not needed to elect the president, those states saw it as a red flag.
They felt unrepresented in the election and feared major changes were coming. Secession followed. Lincoln sent supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter, and southern forces around the fort saw that not as a simple supply mission but as a declaration of war. They fired on Fort Sumter.
Newspapers reported that the southern forces had fired first, and the Union built up its fighting machine. Lincoln called for 75,000 men, and there was no turning back. By 1863, the Union Army had been badly beaten in nearly every engagement in the East, while the West had fared better under different leadership. Not long before Gettysburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville had become an all-time nightmare for the Union Army.
But at the last moment, the right man for the job arrived in the form of General George Meade, who faced a massive task in Gettysburg. On the third day of the battle, nearly 15,000 Confederate soldiers advanced across the field directly behind the spot where the video was recorded, attempting to break the Union lines. Two days earlier, thousands of soldiers from both sides had already been killed and wounded, and their bodies lay scattered across the fields. The video asks viewers to imagine standing on that ground, seeing the dead and wounded everywhere, and watching thousands of gray-clad soldiers marching across the field toward the Union position.
The Gettysburg Address itself was delivered on a muddy day, after soldiers had paraded through town and citizens had been digging graves and pulling bodies from the fields. Lincoln’s speech opened with the now-famous words: “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. ”
He went on to say that the nation was engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, could long endure. The battlefield, he said, had been dedicated as a final resting place for those who gave their lives so the nation might live.
He acknowledged that the living could not dedicate, consecrate, or hallow the ground, because the brave men who struggled there had already consecrated it far beyond the power of the living to add or detract. He predicted that the world would little note nor long remember what was said there, but could never forget what the soldiers did there. He urged the living to take increased devotion from the honored dead, to resolve that the dead would not have died in vain, that the nation under God would have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, would not perish from the earth. The video emphasizes that Lincoln was not simply honoring the dead.
He was speaking about the nation being reborn into a new concept, whether it could survive, whether it could remain a beacon of hope for democracy, and whether any nation founded the same way could last. He was speaking about an enduring legacy. The creator ends with the question posed at the beginning: Have we lived up to those words? The answer, according to the video, is up to every American.
The message encourages people to help their neighbors, volunteer, reach out to communities, help friends in need, serve the country, and dedicate themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal, so that the men who fought and died at Gettysburg and on other battlefields did not die in vain.