| The
Gettysburg Address |
by
Abraham Lincoln given November 19,
1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
|
|
| "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 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." |
|
|