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|November 19, 1863
|(four months after the battle)
  
  
  
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.
  

|Abraham Lincoln
