Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/523

1863] Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg. 491 literature. After a finished and erudite oration two hours in length by Edward Everett, one of America's great orators and statesmen, the President rose and said : "Fourscore 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 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 honoured 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 govern- ment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Two years of stern warfare, surging to and fro over the field of conflict lying east of the Alleghany Mountains, have thus far been traced, in which were fought the nine or ten serious engagements in the peninsula, and later the pitched battles of Bull Run (the second), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsvule, and Gettysburg. At the end of this long and severe struggle the opposing armies again, in the winter of 1863, confronted each other across the Rapidan, in Virginia, relatively not very far south of where they lay in the winter of 1861, at the beginning of the war. Before the reader attempts to form a comparative estimate of the importance and value of the aggregate result, it will be neces- sary to examine and study the course of the war in the West during the same period. (3) THE WAR ON THE MISSISSIPPI. When, on October 24, 1861, Fremont was relieved of his command in the West, Major-General David Hunter was temporarily appointed to the post. Two weeks later the President created the new Depart- ment of Missouri, to include the States of Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, OH. XV.