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 on a great battle-field 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 can not dedicate—we can not consecrate-
we can not 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.