"Fourscore
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 honoured 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." |
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