Ten Sentences, 272 Words

One hundred fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered the greatest speech ever by an American president.  The speech was all of ten sentences and 272 words long.  It took two minutes to deliver.  Here is the text to that speech:

Four score 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 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 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 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. 
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Of course, this is the Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, on the same battlefield that was the sight of one of the decisive battles of the Civil War.  In this short speech, President Lincoln has brought forth every ideal that our nation was founded upon.  Liberty.  All men are created equal.  And representative government "of the people, by the people and for the people that shall not perish from the earth."

That day, the featured speaker was a man named Edward Everett, a former Secretary of State and famous orator of the day.  He delivered a two hour, 13,607 word speech that is not much remembered today.  His speech was to be the "Gettysburg Address."  After Lincoln's remarks, Mr. Everett himself knew he did not convey the full meaning of the day in two hours like the President had in two minutes.  Thank you Mr. Lincoln.