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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 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. |
