Consecration

Executive Mansion,
Washington, _________________, 186 .

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
on a great battle field of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final rest-
ing place for those who died here, that the nation
might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long
remember what we say here; while it can never
forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedica
ted to the great task remaining before us _
that, from these honored dead we take in-
creased devotion to that cause for which
they here, gave the last full measure of de-
votion _ that we here highly resolve these
dead shall not have died in vain, that
the nation, shall have a new birth of free-
dom, and that government of the people by
the people for the people shall not per-
ish from the earth.

The Nicolay Draft of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Delivered (in somewhat modified form) by President Abraham Lincoln at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. November 19, 1863

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