The exact words
What Lincoln meant in 1863
Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a cemetery for the Union dead was dedicated on the battlefield. Lincoln was invited to give “a few appropriate remarks” after the main speaker, Edward Everett, who spoke for about two hours. Lincoln spoke for about two minutes. His speech does not mention Gettysburg by name, or slavery, or the Confederacy. Instead it steps back and asks what the war is for.
His answer runs through the whole speech and lands in its last sentence. The nation had been founded, he said at the start, on the proposition that all men are created equal, and the war was testing whether any nation built on that idea could last. The dead had given “the last full measure of devotion.” The living, in turn, had to finish their work, so that the country would have “a new birth of freedom” and democracy itself would survive. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is the name he gives to the thing at stake.
Where the idea came from
The three-part formula was not new. Daniel Webster used a version of it in the Senate in 1830, and the abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker described democracy in 1850 as “a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.” Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon later said he had given Lincoln copies of Parker’s sermons. What Lincoln did was strip the idea down and place it at the very end of a speech about sacrifice, where it carries the weight of everything before it.
How people use it today
The phrase has become a standard definition of democracy, quoted in civics classes and political speeches around the world, and France’s constitution states the principle of the Republic in almost the same words. Used that way it works well, but it is worth remembering its original setting. Lincoln was not writing a definition; he was speaking at a graveside, telling a grieving country that its losses would mean something only if democracy survived the war.
What people get wrong
A general definition of democracy, written for a civics textbook.
The closing promise of a short funeral speech, telling a country at war why its soldiers had died and what the living still owed them.
Timeline
- 1830Senator Daniel Webster speaks of “the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”
- 1850The preacher Theodore Parker describes democracy as “a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.”
- July 1863The Battle of Gettysburg leaves tens of thousands of soldiers dead, wounded or missing in three days.
- November 19, 1863Lincoln speaks for about two minutes at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, after a two-hour oration by Edward Everett.
- 1922The Lincoln Memorial opens in Washington with the full text of the address carved into its wall.
Use it in a speech
Questions people ask
Who said “government of the people, by the people, for the people”?
Abraham Lincoln, in the final sentence of the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.
Did Lincoln invent the phrase?
Not entirely. Daniel Webster in 1830 and the preacher Theodore Parker in 1850 used similar three-part formulas. Lincoln's version became the famous one.
How long was the Gettysburg Address?
About 270 words, and it took roughly two minutes to deliver. The main speaker that day, Edward Everett, spoke for about two hours.
Why are there different versions of the Gettysburg Address?
Five handwritten copies in Lincoln's hand survive, and they differ slightly. The version usually quoted, and carved on the Lincoln Memorial, is the “Bliss copy,” the last one Lincoln wrote out.
Cite this quote
These cite the original source directly, so you can use them in an essay or paper. Always check your teacher's required style.
Sources
- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (Bliss copy). Library of Congress, Gettysburg Address exhibition.
- Abraham Lincoln Online, Gettysburg Address texts.
- Daniel Webster, Second Reply to Hayne, U.S. Senate, January 26, 1830.
- Theodore Parker, “The American Idea,” speech, 1850.