 | Classic
Democratic Theory
The
Gettysburg Address
Abraham
Lincoln
President
Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address in 1863, during the
Civil War, following the Union victory at the battle of 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 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
the 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.
|
