272 words, delivered in about two minutes. Lincoln appears to dedicate a cemetery and ends up redefining what a country is.
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.
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Eighty-seven years ago, our ancestors founded a new nation on this continent, built on liberty and dedicated to the idea that all people 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.
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Now we're in a great civil war that tests whether a nation built on those ideas can last at all. We've gathered on a battlefield of that war to set aside part of it as a resting place for the men who died so the nation could live. That is entirely the right thing to do.
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 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.
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But in a deeper sense we cannot dedicate this ground — the men who fought here already did, and nothing we say can add to it. The world will hardly notice our speech, but it will never forget what they did. Instead, we who are alive should give ourselves to the work they began: that these dead did not die for nothing, that this nation has a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people does not disappear from the earth.
How a sentence gets a room to move. Every answer comes with the reason and the line that proves it.
That's the whole thing.
Read it again slowly — it gets better the second time.