Front:
Sent by
Gettysburg, Pa.,
CAPT. JAMES T. LONG, GETTYSBURG, PA.
COPYRIGHTED AND PUBLISHED BY
190
Gettysburg.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on 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
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 can not dedicate--we can not
consecrate---we can not 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 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 govern-
ment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.
November 19, 1863.
Abraham Lincoln.
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AUTHORIZED BY ACT OF CONGRESS OF MAY 19, 1898.
TWO CENTS
