On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln declared that the nation, brought forth in liberty and dedicated to human equality, was being tested by civil war and called on the living to continue the unfinished work for which the dead had given their lives, so that the nation might have a new birth of freedom and government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from the earth.