It was dedicated
to its sacred use on November 19, 1863. At the end of the stately
ceremonies President Lincoln rose and said:
"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.
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