gettysburg-address.txt

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 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 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, 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 government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.