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.