Today marks the 150th anniversary of the historic Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln, one of the most famous speeches of all time.
On the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania, Lincoln's speech symbolized his presidency and the sacrifices made by Union and Confederate forces.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, Civil War historian James McPherson, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and others spoke to mark the 150th anniversary.
"Lincoln's timeless words embodied and galvanized us as a nation," Congressman Scott Perry, R-Pa., said at the event held on the same hallowed ground.
"Everything we've achieved since that time was born out of the sacrifice of the soldiers that fought here and the patriots that followed in their footsteps."
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was first delivered nearly five months after the major battle that left tens of thousands of men wounded, dead or missing.
The ceremony included a wreath-laying at the Soldiers' National Cemetery, a graveside salute to U.S. Colored Troops at noon, and a tree planting ceremony.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also swore in 16 new citizens.
"Welcome my soon-to-be-fellow citizens," Scalia said. "May America bring you all you expect from it and may you give it all the it expects from you."
In 1863, the Gettysburg Address was not immediately recognized as the towering literary achievement of "timeless eloquence and lasting significance"
The ideals expressed in the speech also weren't necessarily a reflection of reality, but as the decades passed, it became emblematic of so many things.
Here's the full text of the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln:
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.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
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