-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Four score 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 can not dedicate... we | | can not consecrate... we can not 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. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------