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
Spoken byAbraham Lincoln1809–1865 · 16th President of the United States
The opening sentence of the Gettysburg Address, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 19 November 1863. This exact wording is the signed “Bliss copy” that Lincoln wrote out in 1864 — the version treated as the standard text and inscribed on the Lincoln Memorial ↗.
“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” Abraham Lincoln, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 19, 1863 — wording of the signed “Bliss copy” (1864), the standard text. Verified via quotle.info.
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Provenance
The speech
Speech
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Delivered
19 November 1863 · Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Text follows
The signed “Bliss copy,” written 1864 — the standard text, now displayed in the White House
Manuscripts
Five in Lincoln’s hand: Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft, Bliss
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.
Opening of 271 words
Transcriptions of the manuscript differ over exactly one comma: abrahamlincolnonline.org ↗ and Wikipedia’s flagged transcription of the Bliss copy both print “brought forth on this continent,” while Wikisource’s page transcription ↗ prints “brought forth, on this continent.” The words are identical either way.
Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗ carries the line under “The Gettysburg Address (1863),” dated to the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on 19 November 1863, and states that its text is “based on the signed ‘Bliss Copy’.” The wording matches this quote exactly.
Wikisource reproduces the Bliss manuscript ↗ with a page-by-page transcription; its header note records that this copy, once owned by the family of Colonel Alexander Bliss, is the only manuscript to which Lincoln affixed his signature.
All five copies printed side by side ↗ show where the popular wording comes from: the Bliss and Bancroft texts read “on this continent,” while the Nicolay and Hay drafts read “upon this continent.” The same page notes that Lincoln wrote the Bliss version in 1864 and that it has been the most reproduced ever since, “notably on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial.”
The American Battlefield Trust ↗ sets out the differences among the manuscripts — chiefly that the Hay and Nicolay copies lack “under God,” which the three later copies contain and which at least three telegraph correspondents included in the reports they filed that day.
✓Public domain
Lincoln delivered the address in 1863 and reporters telegraphed the text the same afternoon; his final signed manuscript was written out for Colonel Alexander Bliss, Bancroft’s stepson and the publisher of Autograph Leaves ↗, and reproduced in facsimile in John Pendleton Kennedy and Alexander Bliss, eds., Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors — imprint Baltimore: Cushings & Bailey, 1864 ↗. Every publication of this text long predates 1931, so it is in the public domain in the United States.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong
Nobody serious doubts Lincoln said this. What gets mangled is how it was written, which of five slightly different texts you are quoting, and whose words “all men are created equal” originally were.
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How it was writtenThe back-of-an-envelope story Legend
The wording“Brought forth, upon this continent” Variant
The two earliest drafts — the Nicolay and Hay copies — read “brought forth, upon this continent.” The familiar “on this continent” comes from the later Bancroft and Bliss copies, which is why the five texts printed side by side ↗ do not read identically.
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The famous phraseThe Declaration of Independence (1776) Quoting, not coining
“All men are created equal” is not Lincoln’s line — he was quoting the Declaration of Independence, and in his earliest draft he marked it as a quotation: the Nicolay manuscript ↗ puts “all men are created equal” inside quotation marks.
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What the standard text isA transcript of the delivery Not a recording
The version everyone quotes is Lincoln’s own fair copy written in 1864, not a stenographic record of 19 November 1863. The contemporary Associated Press dispatch from Joseph L. Gilbert’s shorthand ↗ differs from the manuscripts in minor ways, and the two earliest drafts lack “under God.”
✓Lincoln wrote it, revised it, and copied it out at least five times — and the sentence you know is his final, signed version, reproduced in Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗ and inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
Edward Everett, the day’s featured orator, spoke for about two hours. Lincoln followed with 271 words, read in under two minutes, before a crowd of roughly 15,000 people gathered to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery — ground where more than 3,000 Union soldiers had been killed four and a half months earlier.
The opening sentence does the whole rhetorical job. Counting back four score and seven years from 1863 lands on 1776, so Lincoln dated the nation’s founding to the Declaration of Independence ↗, and made “all men are created equal” the proposition the war was being fought to keep. It was not universally admired on the day: Everett praised it and pro-Union papers approved, but Democratic papers attacked it ↗.
Two hours of Edward Everett, then two minutes of Lincoln — and it is Lincoln’s 271 words that survived.
Which of the five copies you are actually quoting
The five manuscripts differ in small ways, and the most consequential difference is theological: the phrase “under God” is absent from the Nicolay and Hay drafts but present in the Everett, Bancroft and Bliss copies. At least three telegraph correspondents ↗ filed the speech that day with “under God” in it, which is the main reason historians think Lincoln added it aloud on the platform.
So the standard text is not a transcript of the delivery. It is Lincoln’s own final fair copy, written months afterwards. The closest contemporary record of what was actually spoken is the Associated Press dispatch transcribed from Joseph L. Gilbert’s shorthand notes ↗, which differs from the manuscripts in a number of minor ways.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Lincoln was an Illinois lawyer, four-term state legislator and one-term congressman (1847–1849) before winning the presidency in 1860; he led the United States through the Civil War from 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He was a deliberate writer rather than an improviser: invited only seventeen days beforehand, he drafted his remarks in Washington and kept revising the text long after he had delivered it. The Gettysburg Address is the most compressed thing he ever wrote — 271 words, read in under two minutes — and he copied it out by hand at least five times.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Source
Lincoln, Abraham. “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.” Speech, Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 19 November 1863. Wording as in the signed “Bliss copy” (1864), published in John Pendleton Kennedy and Alexander Bliss, eds., Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors (Baltimore: Cushings & Bailey, 1864).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/four-score-and-seven-years-ago-our-fathers-brought-forth-on/