The
Gettysburg Address
"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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