6. Gettysburg Address
DAIR Activity to start class.
Today's lesson:
1. Listen to the Gettysburg Address.
2. Read the Gettysburg Address in groups. Use the Remix sheet to help organize your thinking
3. Look up any words that you don't know and class discussion about the meaning of the Address
4. Close read as a group, line by line
5. Talk about emphasis and voice
6. Re-read as a group
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.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
You have just arrived at Gettysburg to give a speech at the newly created Soldier's Cemetery. You know that what you say will be examined by millions of people across the country, and possibly through out history. The country have been fighting against itself for 2 and a half years, and the end does not appear to be close. Southerners hate you and want to leave the country you love, and Northerners are starting to considering giving up and letting the South go on its own.
What will you say to the people to inspire them to keep fighting to keep the country together?