If I were to start this blog with the words "seven score and four years ago" chances are that most of my readers would guess that I was talking about the Gettysburg Address which was, in fact, given on this day seven score and four years (or 144) years ago (November 19, 1863). "score" meaning 20 has become so archaic in our language that Lincoln's use of it has pretty much identified the word with him. It is interesting to read some of the background in an article in the Free Dictionary. We don't often consider how horrific that war was but over 7,500 men on both sides died on the fields of Gettysburg in 3 days of battle - twice as many as we have lost in more than 4 years in Iraq (although if you count both sides the casualties are considerably more than 7,500).

Building a national cemetery was a new idea and Lincoln's inclusion on the program was almost an afterthought. He certainly wasn't the main speaker and wasn't expected to give a long talk. The main speaker spoke for two hours. According to the Free Dictionary

Not long after those well-received remarks, Lincoln spoke in his high-pitched Kentucky accent for two or three minutes. Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" summarized the war in 10 sentences and 272 words, rededicating the nation to the war effort and to the ideal that no soldier at Gettysburg had died in vain.

Despite folk tales to the contrary, Lincoln didn't write his speech at the last minute and didn't write it on the back of an envelope. Lincoln was well read and had many great works of literature at his disposal. Interestingly, there is not one "official" manuscript of Lincoln's speech but there is one that is considered the "standard one" as it was the last one produced and it has Lincoln's signature on it.

And now the 272 words:

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.