Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Nov. 19, 1863
"Fourscore 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
we cannot 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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