"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."