Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers broughtforth upon this continent a new nation, conceived inliberty and dedicated to the proposition that allmen are created equal.
Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testingwhether that nation or any nation so conceived andso dedicated, can long endure. We are met on agreat battlefield of that war. We have come todedicate a portion of that field as a finalresting-place for those who here gave their lives thatthat nation might live. It is altogether fitting andproper 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 powerto add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it cannever forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to theunfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather forus to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us---that from these honored dead wetake 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,and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
