1863
AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
November 19, 1863
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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 the 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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THE END OF LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
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