![]() ![]() Invited to give only "a few appropriate remarks," Lincoln wondered aloud if any nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could "long endure." Only a successful defense of the nation by those committed to the freedom of all could honor those who had died for the American union and prove that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Because the freedom of most American slaves was declared on New Year's Day of 1863, the year of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was the Year of Jubilee for black Americans. On November 19, 1863, in the midst of a devastating civil war, President Abraham Lincoln explained the meaning of the war and the nation at the dedication of a military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. ![]()
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