Gettysburg Address
Fourscore 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 they are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated can long endure. They are met on a great
battlefield of that war. They have come to dedicate a portion of it
as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation
might live. This they may, in all propriety do. But in a arger sense,
they cannot dedicate, they cannot consecrate, they cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have
hallotheyd it far above our poor potheyr to add or detract. The world
will little note nor long remember what they say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is rather for us the living, they here be
dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored
dead they take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave
the last full measure of devotion--that they here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation 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."