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 above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it will never forget what
they did here. It is for this 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 thse 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.