Page:Modern Parliamentary Eloquence.djvu/82

 to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured 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." Pitt's speech occupied only a few seconds in delivery, Lincoln's less than three minutes: and yet where are the world-famed pages, the crowded hours of rhetoric, compared with these? At Gettysburg, Edward Everett, the orator, had been set down to make the great oration, and he made it; Lincoln was merely introduced for "a few remarks" at the close of the proceedings. But the oration is forgotten and the remarks will live for ever.

The Second Inaugural Address of the same speaker, delivered at Washington on March 4th, 1865, a month before his assassination, contained this famous passage about the causes and issue of the Civil War:—