History & philosophy · 1863
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, November 19, 1863 · The Bliss copy
- Source
- quod.lib.umich.edu
- Retrieved
- 27 September 2026
- License
- Public domain
- Rights holder
- Abraham Lincoln, 1864
- Language
- English
About this edition and its rights
Edition
The final text, known as the Bliss copy, as printed in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler for the Abraham Lincoln Association (Rutgers University Press, 1953), volume 7, pages 22 and 23, in the digital edition of the University of Michigan Library (read from its capture of 3 November 2024 by the Internet Archive, the site being behind a browser check on 27 September 2026). Checked word for word against the scans of the three pages of the manuscript on Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blisscopy-1.jpg, Blisscopy-2.jpg, Blisscopy-3.jpg, marked public domain). The digital edition types each of the seven dashes as three hyphens (---), the TeX convention for an em dash: they are set as em dashes, and the manuscript has a dash at each of these places. The edition’s note calls (33, 34) are left out. The date and the signature, “November 19. 1863. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”, are set on one line, the signature in small capitals; the manuscript has “Abraham Lincoln.” above the date.
Rights
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) wrote this copy out in 1864, and it was published in facsimile the same year in Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors. In France, its author died on 15 April 1865, before 1 January 1956; in the United States, it was published before 1931. A faithful transcription of it adds no protected work.
The manuscript “is kept on view in the Lincoln Bedroom on the second floor of the White House” (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gettysburg_Address_Bliss_copy.jpg). The Collected Works are online “with permission from their copyright holder” (University of Michigan Library): the poster takes from them only Lincoln’s words, not the editorial notes.
Address delivered at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.
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.
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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not 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.
November 19. 1863. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.