From a field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a modern reflection on the most famous speech in American history is asking whether the nation has lived up to the words spoken there. Almost every American can quote the opening phrase of the address, but the question being posed today is whether the country has truly honored the proposition that all men are created equal. Before the Civil War, the United States was deeply divided over the meaning of its Constitution and over the institution of slavery. The country was expanding and trying to define itself, with many Americans resistant to the constant changes taking place.
One of the central arguments was whether states had the right to separate from the Union if they were unhappy with the federal government. When Abraham Lincoln ran for president, many southern politicians feared he was an abolitionist. They worried that his election would not only prevent the expansion of slavery into new states, but would also threaten slavery where it already existed. When Lincoln won the election, it became clear that the southern states were no longer necessary to elect a president, and that signaled danger to them.
Secession began, and tensions escalated. Lincoln sent supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter, which southern forces interpreted as a declaration of war. They fired on the fort, and the resulting headlines helped build support for the Union war effort. Lincoln called for 75,000 men, and from that point there was no turning back.
By 1863, the Union Army had suffered repeated defeats in the East. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union had endured a devastating loss at Chancellorsville. General George Gordon Meade was given the enormous task of stopping the Confederate advance, and he took command just in time for the battle at Gettysburg. On the third day of fighting, roughly 15,000 Confederate soldiers advanced across the open field in what became known as Pickett’s Charge, attempting to break the Union line.
Two days earlier, thousands of soldiers from both sides had already been killed or wounded, and their bodies lay scattered across the battlefield. Abraham Lincoln was not originally scheduled to be the main speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. That honor went to Edward Everett, who delivered a very long speech that most people have forgotten. Lincoln’s address was so brief that a photographer trying to capture him speaking only caught him sitting down afterward.
The Gettysburg Address begins with the words “Four score and seven years ago,” and it reframed the meaning of the war. Lincoln spoke of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, and he questioned whether such a nation could long endure. He described the battlefield as consecrated by the brave men who fought there, and he called on the living to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work of preserving the nation, ensuring that the dead would not have died in vain, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from the earth. The speech was not simply a tribute to the fallen.
In a larger sense, it was about whether the United States could survive and be reborn as a beacon of democracy. Lincoln argued that the nation itself was being tested, and that the survival of self-government depended on the dedication of its citizens. The modern reflection on the field ends with a question directed at every American. Whether the country has lived up to Lincoln’s words is left for each person to decide.
The suggestion is that living up to those words means helping neighbors, volunteering, serving the country, and dedicating oneself to the proposition that all men are created equal. The goal is to ensure that those who fought and died on this field and on many other battlefields did not die in vain.