d to do so, as I had in
other places; but I will tell you it was because I expected to have the
opportunity of speaking with some sort of ease and quiet. [A voice: "So
you have."] I have for an hour and a half spoken against a storm--[Hear,
hear!]--and you yourselves are witnesses that, by the interruption, I
have been obliged to strive with my voice, so that I no longer have the
power to control this assembly. [Applause.] And although I am in spirit
perfectly willing to answer any question, and more than glad of
the chance, yet I am by this very unnecessary opposition to-night
incapacitated physically from doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you
good-evening.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

THE GETTYSBURGH ADDRESS,

NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 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 that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But
in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it far above our 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, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS,

MARCH 4, 1865.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office,
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first.
Then a statement, somew