30 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on
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this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated
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to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that
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nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
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endure.
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We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
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We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final
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resting place for those who here gave their lives that that
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nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that
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we should do this.
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But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not
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consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground.
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The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
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consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
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The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
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but it can never forget what they did here.
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It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
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unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
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nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
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the great task remaining before us - that from these honored
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dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
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gave the last full measure of devotion -
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that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
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died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new
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birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the
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people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.
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Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
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