Speech - The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

I have been exposed to numerous speeches when I was still in my elementary years. My English teacher encourages the class to develop our speaking ability. She wants that we could speak fluently in English. She wants us to have self confidence and self-trust. As a result, she found a great idea of harnessing our speaking skills. Every Monday of the first week of the month, she is giving us a piece (speech copy) to memorize and on every third week, Friday, the speech delivery begins.

But before we present the speech, our teacher taught us the vital things that we need to do in delivering the Speech, from our hand gestures, audience contact,  posture, voice and many more. It was so helpful for us to learn many things out from developing our speaking skills.

The first piece that she introduced to us is from the composition of Abraham Lincoln entitled, The Gettysburg Address. Here is the full copy of the piece:

The Gettysburg Address

by Abraham Lincoln

Fourscore 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 battlefield 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 nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, Is a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot 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.