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Almost five months after the Civil Wars deadliest clash, President Abraham Lincoln and other Union leaders gathered to dedicate the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The program for the occasion featured music, prayer, orations, and benedictions. In the middle of it all, the president gave a few commemorative remarks, speaking for just two minutes, delivering what we now know as the Gettysburg Address. Challenged to mark the enormity of the battlewhich had turned the tide of the war, though neither side realized it yetLincoln used 272 words in ten sentences to rededicate the Union to the preservation of freedom. It remains the most important statement of our nations commitment to personal liberty since the Revolutionary War and has become one of the most important speeches in American history, a cornerstone of who we are as a country.