Eighty-seven years after the nation's founding, amid a great civil war testing whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to human equality could endure, part of a battlefield was set aside as a final resting place for those who gave their lives so the nation might live. Yet the ground had already been consecrated by the brave men, living and dead, who struggled there, beyond any added human power. The living were called instead to devote themselves to the unfinished work advanced by those who fought, to draw increased devotion from the honored dead, to resolve that their sacrifice would not be in vain, that the nation would experience a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from the earth.