Today is the anniversary of the day that Abraham Lincoln delivered the “Gettysburg Address.”

Of the five known manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address, the Library of Congress has two. President Lincoln gave one of these to each of his two private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. The other three copies of the Address were written by Lincoln for charitable purposes well after November 19. The copy for Edward Everett, the orator who spoke at Gettysburg for two hours prior to Lincoln, is at the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield; the Bancroft copy, requested by historian George Bancroft, is at Cornell University in New York; the Bliss copy was made for Colonel Alexander Bliss, Bancroft’s stepson, and is now in the Lincoln Room of the White House.

Here are Lincoln’s revered words:

“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.”

The movie, Lincoln, that just opened this past weekend focuses on a brief period in the great President’s life in the White House during which Lincoln is obsessed with the passage of the 13th Amendment. To begin the year 1863, Lincoln issued the “Emancipation Proclamation“; the residual intent of which was being tested in the latter days of the Civil War as the House of Representatives wrestled with the abolition of slavery at the end of the war.

This movie revolves around the political machinations that enveloped the 13th Amendment; it is a superb lesson in history; in democratic process and in personalities.

Here are some reviews from publications and sources around the country:

“There won’t be enough Academy Awards for Lincoln.”

 “Daniel Day-Lewis and Spielberg offer a ‘Lincoln’ both moving and monumental … “

“Go see this movie. Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. “Lincoln” is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece — an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

“Mr. Spielberg has done right by him. ‘Lincoln’ is good history and a grand film. As we watch him ambling out of the White House for the last time, to the theater, we so want him not to go — to be somehow detained or detoured. But he never is. He belongs not just to the ages, but to our finest moment of history and tragedy.”