The Kentucky Monument is in Gettysburg National Cemetery. (Tour map: National Cemetery)
No Kentucky regiments or batteries from either side fought at Gettysburg. Some individual soldiers did, such as Union Brigadier General John Buford, who had a major role in deciding where the battle would occur and how its early actions would unfold.
But the monument honors one man from Kentucky who did not take part in the fighting, Abraham Lincoln, who was born and raised near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His Gettysburg Address on November 9, 1863 at the dedication of the National Cemetery memorialized and gave meaning to the battle.
Text from the monument:
Kentucky honors her son, Abraham Lincoln,
who delivered his immortal address at the
site now marked by the Soldiers’ Monument.
The monument bears the Seal of the State of Kentucky and reproduces the text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
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 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 that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not 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.
Location of the monument
The monument is in Gettysburg National Cemetery, 25 feet southeast of the Soldiers National Monument. (39°49’11.0″N 77°13’52.0″W)