Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863 to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers who fell in the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. In the address, Lincoln framed the Civil War as a struggle to determine whether the nation founded on the principles of equality, liberty and democracy as expressed in the Declaration of Independence could long endure. He called on Americans to resolve to fight for these principles and ensure that the soldiers who died did not do so in vain, but to establish a new birth of freedom in the United States.