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- Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg, 1863
-
- 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 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 restingplace 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 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 government of
- the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
- earth.