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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on.

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 here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln's 1998 Biography
[Written by Living historian Ralph E. Borror]

n 1808 My FatherThomas Lincoln moved the family from Elizibethtown. To the new 348 acre Sinking Springs farm he had just bought for two hundred dollars. My mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln and sister Sarah moved into the cabin at the Top of the hill. On the 12 day of February 1809 I was born. Just two months after they moved in.

hen I was 2 years old. Our family moved to the Knob Creek farm. We lived there until I was 5 years. This is the first place that I remember things from my past. When I was eight we moved to Little Pigeon Creek in Southern Indiana. When we had been there about two years, my mother got sick and died. Sometime later my Dad traveled back to Elizabeth Town in Kentucky to ask Sarah Bush Johnston to marry him and come to live in Indiana. I liked her right away. The next few years I worked at all kinds of jobs: chopping down trees, making rail fences, working at the mill, and many others. Indiana was a nice place.

hen I was eighteen I took two men and their trunks on my new flat boat to a steamer in the river. After they boarded the steamer they flipped me a half dollar. That was a special day in my life. I could not believe I had made a dollar in one day.

he new town of New Salem was the next place I lived. When I first arrived there I worked in a store. But that store didn't do well for the owner and he closed it. Many jobs followed; postmaster, laborer, store owner, militia, deputy surveyor, state legislator, and others.

fter I turned 27, I moved to Springfield Illinois to practice law. I met Joshua Speed not long after I arrived there. We shared a room above the store that he owned until he sold it and moved away New Years day 1841. I had meet Marry Todd in the summer of 1840. We would be married in her sister's house, Mrs. Ninian Edwards, on November , 1842.

ur first year of marriage was spent in the Globe Tavern. In May of 1844 we moved to the one-and-a-half story house on Eighth Street. We bought it from the Reverend Charles Dresser (Who had married us) for 1,500 dollars. Latter we would add a second story and a kitchen wing on the back. Robert was about 9 months old when we moved in. Our three other sons were born in this house.

n mid 1850, I became very involved in the new Republican party and was elected it's first president in 1860. The next four years we spent putting down a conflict between the states. Over 600,000 men would loose there lives in this conflict.

he event that happened in the Ford Theatre on April 14 while Mrs. Lincoln were watching the play "Our American Cousin". It was a very good play, although I can't recall how it ended!

I hope this answers all your Questions. A...Lincoln (This page was updater November 16, 2002

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