Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth onthis continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicatedto 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 longendure.  We are met on a great battle-field of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a finalresting place for those who here gave their lives that thatnation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper thatwe should do this.  But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can notconsecrate — we can not hallow — this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, haveconsecrated 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 theunfinished work which they who fought here have thus far sonobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated tothe great task remaining before us — that from these honoreddead we take increased devotion to that cause for which theygave the last full measure of devotion —  that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not havedied in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a newbirth of freedom — and that government of the people, by thepeople, for the people, shall not perish from this earth. Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania