The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln, 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. |
|