Battle of Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address

Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North ended in three days of fighting around Gettysburg, culminating in the failed Confederate assault known as Pickett's Charge. More than 50,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or missing. In November Abraham Lincoln dedicated the soldiers' cemetery with a two-minute address that recast the war as a struggle for 'a new birth of freedom'.