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
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 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.
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