During a great civil war testing whether a nation founded in liberty and dedicated to human equality could endure, a portion of a battlefield was set apart as a final resting place for those who gave their lives so that the nation might live. The ground had already been consecrated beyond any added human power by the brave men, living and dead, who struggled there. The living were called instead to dedicate 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.
