All grade 5, 6, 7, and 8th grade students in a public, private, or parochial school, or those who are home schooled, are eligible. This contest is conducted without regard to race, religion, sex, or natural origin.




Essay is to be handwritten in ink, typed, or prepared on a computer or word processor, using black type in a non-script font no smaller than 12 point or larger than 14 point.

All of the essay must be the student’s work. Each essay must be the student’s original work. Each essay must have a title page.





Your essay must have a bibliography listing all references utilized. Internet resources, if used, should be cited in similar format to that used for printed resources. Add the electronic address used to access the document as supplementary information. Any essay with information copied directly from sources without using quotes will be disqualified.

For assistance, please read "How to Prepare a Bibliography."



The topic for 2008-2009 American History Essay Contest is: The Gettysburg Address

What message did the Gettysburg Address communicate to our war torn nation in l863? How are the ideals articulated in the speech still relevant for our country today?


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 battlefield 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 the 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.




Essay must have a bibliography listing all references utilized. Internet resources, if used, should be cited in similar format to that used for printed resources. Add the electronic address used to access the document as supplementary information. Any essay with information copied directly from sources without using quotes will be disqualified.

In the reference area of the Smyth-Bland Regional library, we have a DAR display of materials from the reference section, and circulating library. We can provide you with magazine articles or information from pamphlets, videos are also available on the topic and we will be happy to guide you to various Internet web sites.


Come into the library and look over the variety of resources that you may use in your research for the American History Contest.

You may check out books, utilize reference materials, copy magazine articles, and access the Internet and FinditVA electronic databases.

If you need help finding research materials, the reference department staff is available and happy to help you. We have a special D.A.R. display of materials for you in the reference department and you can access a bibliography of available materials by clicking on the link below.