Call for submissions for a North American contest!
URGENT: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic we are moving the deadline back one year, submissions are now due April 15, 2022.
“Four score and seven years ago…” Many of us know those famous words spoken by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Now, we want a redo; a redress, if you will.
The Gettysburg College Peace and Justice Studies Program, in collaboration with the Civil War Institute, is now accepting submissions of modern takes on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. We are looking for a speech that maintains a similar tone to the Gettysburg Address, but that is suited to the 21st century context in the United States. Be as creative as possible!
Submissions are due by April 15, 2022. To be eligible, you must be an undergraduate or high school student residing in North America. Please send entries (or questions) to [email protected].
The winner will receive a cash prize and may be invited to attend the CONAPP peace and justice conference in early June 2022 at Gettysburg College, to recite the winning speech.
This contest is managed by the Peace & Justice Studies Program and the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
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Original Address:
President Lincoln delivered the 272 word Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Fourscore 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. 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. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot 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 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, 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.
Source: Transcript of Cornell University’s Copy
This contest is managed by the Peace & Justice Studies Program and the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.
