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 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.