A new nation founded on liberty and dedicated to human equality was being tested by civil war over whether such a nation could endure. On a battlefield where many had given their lives so that the nation might live, the living gathered to set apart part of the field as a final resting place for the dead. Yet the soldiers who struggled there had already consecrated the ground beyond any further human act. The dead were to be honored not by words alone but by renewed dedication among the living to the unfinished work they had advanced, to the cause for which they gave the fullest devotion, to a new birth of freedom, and to the survival of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.