On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dedicated 
a national cemetery at Gettysburg Pennsylvania, where a few 
months earlier thousands had died.  


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 thatnation 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 bravemen, 
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 
emaining 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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