08 Gettysburg Address
Delivered on 19th day of November, 1863, by Abraham Lincoln
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth1 upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated2 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 nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate3, we cannot hollow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated4 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 this honored dead we take incresed devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resovle that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God should have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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