GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
(November 19,1863)
by
President Abraham Lincoln
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 the
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
