Abraham Lincoln, The
(1863)
Four score 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 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 beyond 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, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall
not perish from the earth.