The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln ‘ Fourscore 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 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 cons ecrate , 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 honoured 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 freedom , and that government of the people , by the people , for the people shall not perish from the earth . ‘