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Hello. On the 19th of November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke briefly at the dedication

of the soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg on the site of the bloodiest battle of the American

Civil War. His Gettysburg address became one of the most famous and influential speeches

in American history. It opens with the biblical four-score years and seven years ago and

closes barely two minutes and 272 words later, with a resolution that government of the people

by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Its greatest wasn't immediately clear, while the Chicago Tribune said Lincoln's words

would live among the annals of the war, the times of London apine, anything more dull and

can't place it would not be easy to produce. The times was wrong. Its reputation grew and

grew and many Americans as children learned it by heart.

With me to discuss the Gettysburg address, I'm Katherine Clinton, Denman Chair of American

History at the University of Texas, and International Professor at Queen's University of Belfast.

Susan Mary Grant, Professor of American History at the University of American History

and Tim Lockley, Professor of American History at the University of Warwick. Tim, why was

America at war in 1861?

Well, the Civil War was essentially a war about slavery. It's a war that has been a long

time brewing. We can look back 30, 40 years with conflicts between southern states that

General Young slaves and their economy was entirely based around slavery to northern states

which had generally got rid of slavery by the middle of the 19th century. It's a war

...