|
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
it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation
might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed 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 rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task
remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of
devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain, that this nation 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." |
