|
Gettysburg
Address
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 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 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 consecrate, we cannot 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."
|
|