Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Delivered at the dedication of
the cemetery at Gettysburg
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 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.
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