30 lines
1.5 KiB
Text
30 lines
1.5 KiB
Text
|
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 this earth.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
|