On a grey afternoon on 19 November 1863, Abraham Lincoln mounted a platform in a field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was there in memory of the    1    (die)soldiers. The place was the site of a recent battle     2    thousands of soldiers had died.

At that time, America was    3     (bitter) divided. For two years, its people had been deep in a civil war. The Union side won but    4    a great cost. Over 50,000 soldiers    5     (kill)or wounded, and people lost hope and purpose.

Lincoln understood the feelings of the civilian people. His speech gave them hope, belief and a reason     6     (look) to the future. He gave them    7    new vision of what the United States of America should be     8     (base)on the ideals set down by its Founding Fathers 87 years before. It was what the soldiers had died for. Now it was up to the    9     (live) to remove not only the divisions between North and South, but the boundaries between black and white, and work step by step towards the    10     (equal)of humankind.