During the Civil War, the nation faced a test of whether a country founded in liberty and dedicated to human equality could endure. On the battlefield at Gettysburg, a portion of the field was set aside as a final resting place for those who died so that the nation might live, yet the sacrifice of the soldiers themselves had already hallowed the ground beyond any ceremony. The living were called to continue the unfinished work for which the dead gave their full devotion, to ensure that they had not died in vain, that the nation would experience a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people would not perish from the earth.
