Noted speeches of Abraham Lincoln Author:Abraham Lincoln Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG, PA., NOVEMBER 15, I863 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brou... more »ght forth upon 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 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 hereto 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 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 government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS MARCH 4, 1865 Fellow-countrymen:—At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement some...« less