Four Score and seven years ago
What is the significance of these words? What does 'score' mean? The
word 'score' means 20. So Four score and seven totals 87 years. The
Gettysburg Address was delivered in 1863. 87 years before this date
was 1776 - the birth of America as a nation with the Declaration of
Independence. President Lincoln was referring to the past and all that
America stood for. This one line also has a religious tone. Psalm 90:10 in
the Bible says "The days of our years are threescore years and ten". And
this reminds people of how long a person can expect to live their life.
our fathers brought forth on this
This is a reference to the Founding Fathers and their work to form a
continent a new nation,
Constitution for the new nation of the United States.
conceived in Liberty, and
Lincoln is reminding people that the reason the nation was created was to
gain liberty - another word for freedom. On January 1, 1863 the President
had issued the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, the first step towards
freeing slaves.
dedicated to the proposition that all Another reference to slavery and the equality of men, as stated in the
men are created equal.
Declaration of Independence (unalienable rights).
Now we are engaged in a great civil
With these words he is moving from the past to the present. And he talks
war, testing whether that nation, or about the longevity of a nation fighting a Civil War.
any nation, so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of The great battlefield is the BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, where the losses
that war.
totaled 51,000. But it was only one battle of the war.
We have come to dedicate a portion The reason for the ceremony was to create a memorial/cemetery for
of that field,
those who perished during the battle.
as a final resting place for those
Lincoln is talking about the sacrifice of the lives the men made for their
who here gave their lives that the
country...to help meet the aspirations of the nation.
nation might live.
The dedication ceremony was the honorable appropriate action of the
It is altogether fitting and proper
time.
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 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.
The President is saying that no actions of the living...
can in anyway equal the sacrifice of the dead.
The President is using these words to move from the present to the
future. That the words spoken at the ceremony may not be remembered
in the future but the actions of the dead would not be forgotten.
President Lincoln is reminding people that although the ceremony was
dedicated to those fallen on one battlefield and their achievements in
victory that the Civil War was continuing and there was more to be done.
The gallant dead have fought for the cause, and those left behind were
responsible for ensuring that their sacrifice should not be in vain by
fighting even harder for the cause.
The President ends by talking of God, and a new type of freedom for the
people of the United States by the will of those people and those they
have elected to govern the country. The words are also reminiscent of
the start of the Constitution "We the People..."