t produced in America, may be preferably read
in the original form on page 100 of this collection. I trust that
these, especially if they are teachers of literature, will pardon, for
the sake of others less cultivated in poetic taste, what may appear a
duplication here, unnecessary to themselves, of the address.

SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG

By ABRAHAM LINCOLN

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 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 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, and for the people
Shall not perish from the earth.