The Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY

AT GETTYSBURG.

Four score 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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate— we can not conse-

crate—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 remem-

ber 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 free-

dom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

November 19. 1863.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Copied from Facsimile of the Final Revision published in ' 'Auto- 

graph Leaves of Our Coimtry's Aitthors,'' 1864- .