Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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
here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
