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.