Mr. Lincoln was pleased with Tad's diplomacy, and often laughed at the incident as he told others of it. One day while caressing the boy, he asked him why he called those gentlemen "his friends." "Well," said Tad, "I had seen them so often, and they looked so good and sorry, and said they were from Kentucky, that I thought they must be our friends." "That is right, my son," said Mr. Lincoln; "I would have the whole human race your friends and mine, if it were possible." CHAPTER XI. THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH. Among the many historic scenes in which President Lincoln was an actor there is not one, perhaps, where a single incident gave rise to speculations so groundless and guesses so wide of the truth as his justly celebrated Gettysburg speech.[H] Since his death there has been an enormous expenditure, not to say a very great waste, of literary talent on that extraordinary address, as there has been on almost everything else he did, or was supposed to have done, from his boyhood until the moment of his assassination. That reporters, critics, chroniclers, eulogists, flatterers, and biographers have not only failed to give a true account of that famous speech, but that they have subjected Mr. Lincoln's memory to hurtful misrepresentation, it is the purpose of this chapter to show. [H] Fourscore 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 civil war, testing whether that nation, 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 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.