Gettysburg Address - Abraham Lincoln

Fourscore 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 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 are met to dedicate a portion

of it as the final resting place of those who have given 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 cosecrate,we can not

hallow, this ground. The brave men,living and dead,who struggled here,have

consecrated it,far above our power to add or to detract.

 

The world will very 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on.

 

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 here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly

resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,that the nation shall, under

Got, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people,by the

people,for the people, shall not perish from the earth.