Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, anddedicated 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 soconceived 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 afinal 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, haveconsecrated 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 forgetwhat 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 noblyadvanced. 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 thatcause 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.