On November 19th, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery where 51,000 soldiers (both Union and Confederate) were killed, wounded, or missing just a few months earlier. In honor pf President Lincoln’s birthday, I think a word cloud of the text of his shortest, and yet most important, speech is a fitting tribute, as well as the transcript so that his words can speak for themselves.

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 on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be 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 these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

I find it fitting that the dominant word is “Nation”. That was, after all, the sole object of President Lincoln’s concern during his tenure, and rightly so.

Related: The actual “delivery copy” of the Gettysburg Address is somewhat unknown, as there are multiple versions. The version above is the Nicolay copy.