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 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.
Address of President Lincoln at Gettysburg , Nov. 19,1863.
note, Lincoln was speaking after another guy, who went on for a while, and Abe complimented that guy on the speech he gave.
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