Four score 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 resting place
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.
— Written by President Abraham Lincoln
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