Gettysburg Address Monument

KENTUCKY HONORS HER SON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 
WHO DELIVERED HIS IMMORTAL ADDRESS AT THE 
SITE NOW MARKED BY THE SOLDIERS' MONUMENT

 

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 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, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

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