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 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.
