The most important American address is brief: "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."
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1911, PATRIOT PUB. CO.]