Editing Gettysburg Address (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:Lincoln_Speech_Inscription.jpg|thumb|The words of the Gettysburg Address inscribed inside the [[Lincoln Memorial]] in [[Washington, D.C.]]]]
[[File:Gettysburg Address, issue of 1948.jpg|thumb|In 1948, on the 85th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the [[United States Post Office|U.S. Post Office]] issued a commemorative stamp honoring the event.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_1980.2493.4067 |title=Gettysburg Address issue of 1948 |publisher=Smithsonian National Postal Museum |access-date=September 30, 2024}}</ref>]]
The importance of the Gettysburg Address in the history of the United States is underscored by its enduring presence in American culture. In addition to its prominent place carved into a stone [[cella]] on the south wall of the [[Lincoln Memorial]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], the Gettysburg Address is frequently referenced in popular culture, with the implicit expectation that contemporary audiences are already familiar with the words Lincoln used .{{Citation needed|date=November 2022}}

In the many generations that have passed since the address, it has remained among the most famous speeches in American history<ref>{{cite web|publisher=[[United States Department of State]]|title=Outline of U.S. History|page=73|url=http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2008/April/20080407120920eaifas0.4535639.html|access-date=January 3, 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121020070127/http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2008/April/20080407120920eaifas0.4535639.html|archive-date=October 20, 2012}}</ref> and is often taught in classes about history or civics.<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Dry | first1 = M. | title = Review of National Standards for Civics and Government | journal = PS: Political Science and Politics | volume = 29 | issue = 1 | pages = 49–53 | year = 1996 | doi = 10.2307/420193| jstor = 420193 | s2cid = 154778877 | doi-access = free }}</ref> Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is referenced in another famed oration, [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]'s "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech.<ref>{{cite web|title=King: the March, the Man, the Dream|url=http://www.davidgarrow.com/File/DJG%202003%20AmHistMLKMOWAug.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170923150611/http://www.davidgarrow.com/File/DJG%202003%20AmHistMLKMOWAug.pdf |archive-date=2017-09-23 |url-status=live|access-date=September 23, 2017|last=Garrow|first=David J.|work=American History|date=August 2003|pages=26–35|quote=[F]our days before the [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom|March]] [King] told Al Duckett, a black journalist&nbsp;... that his August 28 oration needed to be "sort of a Gettysburg Address".}}</ref> Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, King began with a reference, by the style of his opening phrase, to President Lincoln and his enduring words: "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the [[Emancipation Proclamation]]. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice."

Phrases from the Gettysburg Address are often used or referenced in other works. The current [[Constitution of France]] states that the principle of the [[French Republic]] is "''gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple et pour le peuple''{{-"}} ("government of the people, by the people, and for the people"), a literal translation of Lincoln's words.<ref>{{cite web|title=Constitution du 4 octobre 1958|url=http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/root/bank_mm/anglais/constiution_anglais_oct2009.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100415061524/http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/root/bank_mm/anglais/constiution_anglais_oct2009.pdf |archive-date=2010-04-15 |url-status=live|access-date=October 18, 2009}}</ref> [[Sun Yat-Sen]]'s "[[Three Principles of the People]]" as well as the preamble for the 1947 [[Constitution of Japan]] were also inspired from that phrase.<ref>{{Cite book | last1 = Sharman| first1 = Lyon| title = Sun Yat-sen: His life and its meaning, a critical biography | year = 1968 | publisher = Stanford University Press | page = 271 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=World Constitutions – A Comparative Study|last1=Bhagwan|first1=Vishnoo|last2=Bhushan|first2=Vidya|publisher=Sterling|year=2004|location=New Delhi|page=445}}</ref> The aircraft carrier {{USS|Abraham Lincoln|CVN-72|6}} has as its ship's motto the phrase "shall not perish".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ccsg9/Pages/AboutUs.aspx|publisher=Carrier Strike Group NINE|work=United States Navy|title=USS Abraham Lincoln|quote=Aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) adopted Lincoln's phrase "Shall not perish" as her motto.|access-date=October 14, 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313004023/http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ccsg9/Pages/AboutUs.aspx|archive-date=March 13, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite DANFS|title=Abraham Lincoln|url=http://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/a/abraham-lincoln-cvn-72-ii.html|access-date=October 14, 2011}}</ref>

Following Lincoln's assassination, [[Charles Sumner]], a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts from 1851 to 1874, described the enduring significance of the Gettysburg Address, saying, "That speech, uttered at the field of Gettysburg&nbsp;... and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author," is a monumental act. In the modesty of his nature, he said, "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.' He was mistaken. The world at once noted what he said, and will never cease to remember it."<ref name="History20130222" />

In January 1961, then U.S. president [[John F. Kennedy]] tasked his speechwriter [[Ted Sorensen]] with studying the Gettysburg Address in an effort to assist Sorensen in authoring Kennedy's [[Inauguration of John F. Kennedy#Inaugural address|inaugural address]]. Sorensen drew many lessons from the Gettysburg Address, which according to Sorensen included rhetoric devices used by many speechwriters like [[alliteration]]s, [[rhyme]]s, repetitions, contrast, and balance.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Teachers/Curricular-Resources/~/media/assets/Education%20and%20Public%20Programs/Education/Lesson%20Plans/Analyzing%20the%20Inaugural%20Address.pdf |title=Analyzing the Inaugural Address |access-date=January 21, 2011 |author=JFK Library |author-link=JFK Library|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140325164035/http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Teachers/Curricular-Resources/~/media/assets/Education%20and%20Public%20Programs/Education/Lesson%20Plans/Analyzing%20the%20Inaugural%20Address.pdf|archive-date= March 25, 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |author1=[[Ted Sorensen|Theodore C. Sorensen]] |title=Ted Sorensen on Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Words |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ted-sorensen-on-abraham-lincoln-a-man-of-his-words-12048177/ |access-date=February 13, 2022 |publisher=Smithsonian Magazine |date=October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220213183111/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ted-sorensen-on-abraham-lincoln-a-man-of-his-words-12048177/ |archive-date=February 13, 2022 |quote=Abraham Lincoln, the greatest American president, was also in my view the best of all presidential speechwriters. As a youngster in Lincoln, Nebraska, I stood before the statue of the president gracing the west side of the towering state capitol and soaked up the words of his Gettysburg Address, inscribed on a granite slab behind the statue. Two decades later, in January 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy asked me to study those words again, in preparing to help him write his inaugural address. He also asked me to read all previous 20th-century inaugural addresses. I did not learn much from those speeches (except for FDR's first inaugural), but I learned a great deal from Lincoln's ten sentences.}}</ref>

In July 1963, Kennedy referenced the [[Battle of Gettysburg]] and Gettysburg Address during his own speech in Gettysburg, saying, "Five score years ago, the ground on which we here stand shuddered under the clash of arms and was consecrated for all time by the blood of American manhood. Abraham Lincoln, in dedicating this great battlefield, has expressed, in words too eloquent for paraphrase or summary, why this sacrifice was necessary."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx |title="Message from the President on the Occasion of Field Mass at Gettysburg, June 29, 1963, delivered by John S. Gleason, Jr." Box 10, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence, White House Central Chronological Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. |access-date=August 23, 2013 |archive-date=March 7, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180307234227/https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 2015, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation compiled ''Gettysburg Replies: The World Responds to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address'', a book that challenges leaders to craft 272-word responses celebrating Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, or a related topic.<ref>{{Cite book
|title= Gettysburg Replies: The World Responds to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address|publisher = Lyons Press|date=2015|isbn = 978-1493009121}}</ref> One reply by [[Neil deGrasse Tyson]], an astrophysicist, described Lincoln's greatest legacy as establishing, the same year of the Gettysburg Address, the [[National Academy of Sciences]], which had the longterm effect of "setting our Nation on a course of scientifically enlightened governance, without which we all may perish from this Earth".<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq3UlgKjbZ8 Neil deGrasse Tyson's Gettysburg Reply – "The Seedbed"]</ref>

===Envelope and other myths===
One myth about the Gettysburg Address is that Lincoln quickly authored the speech on the back of an envelope while on the train en route from Washington, D.C, to Gettysburg the day before the address.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lincoln/exhibition/gettysburg/|title=The Myths of Gettysburg}}</ref> This widely held misunderstanding may have originated with ''The Perfect Tribute'', a 1906 book by [[Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews]], which was assigned reading for generations of schoolchildren, sold 600,000 copies when published as a standalone volume,<ref>{{cite news | title=Mary S. Andrews, Author, is Dead | work=[[The New York Times]] | date=August 3, 1936 | page=15}}</ref> and was twice adapted into a movie.

Other lesser known claims include [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s inaccurate assertion that Lincoln composed the address "in only a few moments", and statements by industrialist [[Andrew Carnegie]], who wrongly said he personally supplied Lincoln with the pen with which he authored the address.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0025.205/--more-perfect-tribute?rgn=main;view=fulltext |title=A More Perfect Tribute |access-date=January 30, 2017 |author=Kent Gramm |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |volume=25 |issue=2 |date=Summer 2004 |pages=50–58}}</ref>