"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."
President Abraham Lincoln
