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 the 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.
