ENGLISH DISCUSSION

www.ourdocuments.gov August 13, 2017

Transcript of Gettysburg Address (1863)

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 resting 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, to stand here, we here be dedica-ted to the great task remaining before us --

that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last

full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the

nation, 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.

Abraham Lincoln, Draft of the Gettysburg Address: Nicolay Copy. Transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies

Center, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Available at Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress,

Manuscript Division (Washington, D.C.: American Memory Project, [2000-02]), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml

/malhome.html .

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