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 decract 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 nhave 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 froim the earth
