Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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
this 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 this government of the
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
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