President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address is one of the most famous speeches ever given.

It is stunning in its brevity, 10 sentences, 272 words, and delivered in just over two minutes.

Few have said more with less.

Lincoln delivered the address on November 19, 1863.

He was in Gettysburg to dedicate a national military cemetery to the Union soldiers who fell

at the Battle of Gettysburg four months earlier.

The North's victory here was one of the pivotal battles of the American Civil War.

Lincoln begins this way.

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.

Lincoln goes back in time, not to the signing of the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence.

The Constitution informing our government was the product of many compromises,

most notably slavery.

In contrast, the Declaration of Independence declares our enduring national values.

In one sentence, Lincoln summarizes the American project, liberty for all and equality of all.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Lincoln's assertion is twofold, first, the United States is unique.

No nation was ever founded on a commitment to liberty and equality.

And the Civil War was a trial to see if a nation based on such lofty ideals could survive.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the bloodiest battle of America's bloodiest war.

In three days of fighting, 51,000 Americans on both sides, Union and Confederate,

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