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Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
(1912) United States of America
B&W : Short film
Directed by J. Stuart Blackton and James Young
Cast: Ralph Ince [Abraham Lincoln], Tefft Johnson, James Young, Clara Kimball Young, L. Rogers Lytton, Edith Storey, Charles Kent, Charles Bennett, Robert Gaillard, Charles Eldridge
The Vitagraph Company of America production; distributed by The General Film Company, Incorporated. / Scenario by Beta Breuil. / Released 3 July 1912. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama: Historical.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? On the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln dedicated the ground upon which was fought, July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863, the bloodiest conflict and the pivotal battle of the Civil War. In the following words, he consecrated the battlefield to the memory of the dead and the inspiration of the living: “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 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.” As we read the words of Lincoln and see the visions he saw of the struggles for liberty and the preservation of the Union, we realize their full significance. In the allegorical illustrations shown in this marvelous interpretation, through it we grasp the full import of each thought expressed in the prophetic and immortal words of Lincoln.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Keywords: Abraham Lincoln - USA: Pennsylvania: Gettysburg
Listing updated: 21 December 2024.
References: Pitts-Hollywood pp. 5, 16 : Website-IMDb.
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