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The Gettysburg Address: Professor Tim Lockley on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests Catherine Clinton (Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas and International Professor at Queen's University, Belfast), Susan-Mary Grant (Professor of American History at Newcastle University), and Tim Lockley (Professor of American History at the University of Warwick) discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates. Opening with " Four score and seven years ago," it became one of the most influential statements of national purpose, asserting that America was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and "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." Among those inspired were Martin Luther King Jr whose "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later, echoed Lincoln's opening words.
 

In Our Time
 
The Gettysburg Address

 

Mon 30 May 2016, 16:57 | Tags: TV and Radio