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 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.
