Gettysburg Address \Gettysburg Address\ prop. n.
The popular name of a speech given by Abraham Lincoln on
November 19, 1863, on the battlefield near Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, USA, as part of a ceremony to dedicate a
portion of that battlefield as a cemetary for soldiers who
died fighting there. See note below.
[PJC]
Note: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,
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
battlefield 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 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 this
earth. getup
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