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The Gettysburg Address by
Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 19
1863
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
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.