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- Four score 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 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 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 this earth.
- Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
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