Unto this day, and ever aye,
The nation mourns her martyr's fate.

[Illustration: Lincoln at Gettysburg]

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 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 their 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.

November 19, 1863. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"Undoubtedly there were many in the audience who fully appreciated the
beauty of the President's address, and many of those who read it on
the following day perceived its wondrous character; but it is apparent
that its full force and grandeur were not generally recognized then,
either by its auditors or its readers. Not until the war had ended and
the great leader had fallen did the nation realize that this speech
had given to Gettysburg another claim to immortality and to American
eloquence its highest glory."--From the monograph on the Gettysburg
Address, by Maj. William H. Lambert.

Bayard Taylor, born in Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania,