Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago so began the message

Of a war-weary President Abraham Lincoln

A message written on the back of an envelope on a train

On the way to dedicate a battlefield

Where men from the north and south had died at Gettysburg Pennsylvania

Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent

A new nation conceived in liberty

And dedicated in the proposition that all men are created equal

Now we're 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 the final resting place for those who here gave their lives

That that nation might live

It is altogether fitting and proper thast we should do this

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate we cannot consecrate

We cannot hallow this ground

For the brave men living and dead who struggled here

Have consecreated it far above our poor power to add or detract

The world will little notice or long remember what we say here

But it can never forget what they did here

It is for us the living rather to be dedicasted here to the unfinished work

Which they who fought here have thus 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 and that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom

And the government of the peopole by the people and for the people

Shall not perish from the earth