The Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln

11

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 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 wartesting whether that nation, or any ation 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 this 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 this earth.