Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 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 war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 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 this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Which best describes the development of the passage as a whole?
1. The references to the past, present and future indicate chronological organization
2. The significance of the battle indicates organization by order of importance.
3. The allusion to the founding fathers and the past shows organization by comparison and contrast.
4. The reasons given for the war indicate cause and effect organizational pattern.