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Great Essays
"Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Address"
November 19, 1863
On the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
 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 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.
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