Transcript of the Hay Copy of the Gettysburg
Address
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 here on a great battlefield of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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,
not long remember, what we say here, but can never forget
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus
far, so nobly carried on. 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
here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
this government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
- President Abraham Lincoln
at the dedication of the Civil War cemetery
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
November 19, 1863
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