At the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19, 1863, President Lincoln declared that the nation, founded in liberty and dedicated to human equality, was being tested by civil war. He said the battlefield had already been consecrated by the sacrifice of the soldiers who fought and died there, beyond any power of words to add or detract. He called on the living to devote themselves to the unfinished work for which the dead had given their lives, so that the nation would experience a new birth of freedom and government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from the earth.