“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 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 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.”
