280 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS 1863 in successive attempts to take that fortress, all of which had failed; but on the last day of April he crossed the river at Grand Bluff, and within a few days fought the successful battles of Port Gib son, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and the Big Black river, and shut up the army of Pember- ton in close siege in the city of Vicksburg, which he finally captured with about 30,000 men on July 4. The speech that Mr. Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the National cemetery on the battle field of Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, was at once recognized as the philosophy in brief of the whole great struggle, and has already become classic. There are three slightly differing versions ; the one that is here given is a literal transcript of the speech as he afterward wrote it out for a fair in Baltimore: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, con ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are en gaged in a great civil war, testing whether that na tion, 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
