Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
in Liberty, and
to the proposition that all men are
equal.
Now we are
in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field 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
here, have
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
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
. It is rather for us to be here
to the great task remaining before us-that from these
dead we take
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.