September 11
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,
given November 19, 1863
on the battlefield near
Gettysburg, PA
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 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.