The Gettysburg Address
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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is
for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that
this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
C. 2001 C.L. Young Hay Draft of the Gettysburg Address from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/gatr2.html
