Government of the people, by the people, for the people…

These are the closing words of the Gettysburg Address, as carved on the Lincoln Memorial. On 19 November 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a cemetery for the Union soldiers killed at Gettysburg that July. He recalls the nation born “four score and seven years ago”, predicts that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”, and asks the living to finish the dead soldiers’ work, so that the nation shall have “a new birth of freedom”.

The main orator that day, Edward Everett, spoke for about two hours. The next day he wrote to Lincoln that he would be glad to think he had come as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours as the President had in two minutes.

The formula of the last line had forerunners, among them Daniel Webster, but Lincoln made it the classic definition of democracy. The French Constitution of 1958 states it as the principle of the Republic: “gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple et pour le peuple”.

Gettysburg Address, closing words, as inscribed on the Lincoln Memorial, 1863

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