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President Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Fourscore 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 on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who
have given 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 to 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 that 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,
under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
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 on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who
have given 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 to 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 that 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,
under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.