The 272 Words America Needs Today

Ten sentences that still matter.

I doubt my little newsletter will fare well in a battle for your attention against the election news cycle today. But if you happen to find this letter in your inbox, I invite you to read 272 words that I re-read at least once a year: Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. (Presented below).

This speech was so masterfully written I can’t help but feel like the words came through Lincoln from a higher power. No matter how many times I revisit the prose, I am always awestruck by the solemnity and weight of this text.

Delivered on November 19, 1863 in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln managed to reframe the entire project that is America. In just ten sentences, Lincoln invoked the Declaration of Independence and established a new vision for American democracy.

While American’s founding documents focused on the mechanics of governance, Lincoln’s words elevated equality to the heart of American identity, arguing that a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” was worth dying to preserve.

I hope these timeless words anchor your thoughts today, as a reminder of what our nation has endured and of our capacity for greatness.

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.