Primary source · 19 November 1863
Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
Public domain. Hosted on Life Academy. MLA: Lincoln, Abraham. Gettysburg Address. 1863. Life Academy Source Library.
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…
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here… 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.