Four score and seven years after the founding of a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to human equality, the United States was fighting a great civil war to test whether such a nation could endure. At a battlefield where many had given their lives so the nation might live, a portion of the field was set aside as a final resting place for the dead. Yet the ground had already been hallowed by the brave men, living and dead, who struggled there, beyond any added human power. The living were called instead to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work advanced by those who fought, to take increased devotion from the honored dead, to resolve that they had not died in vain, and to ensure a new birth of freedom and the survival of government of the people, by the people, for the people.