Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 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, and for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
--_President Lincoln._