This reading is the full text of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  Notice that the speech was not made immediately after the battle at Gettysburg, but more than four months later.  The occasion was the dedication of a new national cemetery at the battlefield. 
   Lincoln was not the main speaker that day in November, and the speech drew little notice at first.  But over time, it became famous for its noble expressions honoring the dead soldiers and the principles of the American nation.

The Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.  A scandal erupted over the delay in properly burying soldiers who died.  Partly to smooth over the uproar, a national cemetery was created at the battlefield and dignitaries were invited to the dedication.

Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States during the Civil War.  He believed the Union had to be preserved intact at all costs, and resisted calls for a negotiated peace with the South.

   This reading is followed by directions for marking and highlighting key points and passages.  Discuss with students the point of highlighting and marking up text for close study.  Highlighting text can be very useful, but too much highlighting is useless. 

1.  Above the words "Four score and seven years" students should write the number 87.  (4 times 20, plus 7 = 87; also, 1863 minus 1776 = 87)

2.  Students should highlight the phrases "conceived in liberty" and "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

3.  Students should highlight the phrase "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

4.  Students should highlight some or all of these phrases "to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced" and "for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us."  Also, "increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion" and "we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."