On Nov. 19, 1863, at a ceremony opening a national cemetery, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. While Lincoln’s address lasted just two or three minutes, it is perhaps one of the most memorable speeches in American history. Read more…

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address redefined the struggle for the war not only as a struggle for the Union but also one to establish freedom and equality for all:

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.

American Experience: The Time of the Lincolns
The film Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided weaves together the lives of the two Lincolns. Watch interviews with the filmmakers, from 2000.

NewsHour: Lincoln’s Legacy
A historian explains how the legacy of President Lincoln is portrayed in the new high-tech Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Illinois and why the nation’s 16th president is still a compelling and intriguing figure today. Watch the interview, from April 15, 2005.