Delivered on 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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