E PATRIOT DEAD.

Fourscore 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 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 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 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 governments of the people, by the people, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[Footnote 25: Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of
Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was
eminent for his profound appreciation of 'the subsequent struggle, and
for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April
13, 1865.]

* * * * *

=_Charles Sumner, 1811-1874._= (Manual, p. 487.)

From the "Speech in the Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill," May 25,
1854.

=_96._= PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE BILL.

Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and
the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at
the same time.

It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In
a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute
of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and
wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about
to be recorded, which no tears