25 lines
1.5 KiB
Text
25 lines
1.5 KiB
Text
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
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new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
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are created equal.
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Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
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nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
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battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
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final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
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live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can
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not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
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have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
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little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
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they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
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unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
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is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
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that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
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they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that
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these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall
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have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people,
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for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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Abraham Lincoln
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November 19, 1863
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