After spending seven years working on his newest movie, "Lincoln," everything came full circle for director Steven Spielberg Nov. 19. The two-time Academy Award winning filmmaker delivered his own "Gettysburg Address" on the 149^th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's historic speech to an enraptured crowd of 9,000.

"I've never stood anyplace on earth where it's easier to be humbled than here," said Spielberg at the event, reported the Associated Press.

Spielberg made his remarks at the annual anniversary event of Lincoln's speech at the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg, near the site where Lincoln spoke. The context had certainly changed. When Lincoln spoke in 1863 it was against the backdrop of the still raging American Civil War, just four months after the battle in which the Union turned back an invasion of the North by Confederate troops under Gen. Robert E. Lee. But the crowd still hung on every word.

Having spent such a long time researching the film, Spielberg said the president came to feel like one of his oldest and dearest friends. According to the director he began to sense he was living in the presence of what he called Lincoln's "eloquent ghost."

Spielberg "spoke of the interplay between history and memory, and between memory and justice," reported the Associated Press.

"It's the hunger we feel for coherence, it's the hunger we feel for progress for a better world," he said. "I think justice and memory are inseparable."

The crowd replied with a standing ovation.

"Lincoln wanted us to understand that equality was a small 'D,' democratic essential," Spielberg said, describing Lincoln's three-minute speech as "his best and truest voice" and the single "most perfect prose poem ever penned by an American."

"Lincoln," is said to be a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President's tumultuous final months in office. "In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery," says Dreamworks. "With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come."

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook and Tommy Lee Jones, "Lincoln" is produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, the film is based in part on the book "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Goodwin's book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his Cabinet from 1861 to 1865. The book focuses on Lincoln's mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the US Civil War.

While consulting on a Steven Spielberg project in 1999, Goodwin told Spielberg she was planning to write "Team of Rivals," and Spielberg immediately told her he wanted the rights to the film. DreamWorks finalized the deal in 2001. "Lincoln" has been in pre-production ever since.

According to Spielberg, Goodwin's entire book about Lincoln's presidency is "much too big" for a film, but the director said that the film will focus in on the last few months of Lincoln's life, the ending of slavery, and the Union victory in the Civil War. "What permanently ended slavery was the very close vote in the House of Representatives over the Thirteenth Amendment - that story I'm excited to tell," said Spielberg. He plans to show "Lincoln at work - not just Lincoln standing around posing for the history books... [He was] arguably the greatest working President in American history doing some of the greatest work for the world."

"Lincoln" is in theaters now.