Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
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 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.
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