CHAPTER IX
ON THE ROAD TO WASHINGTON—AND AFTER
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great ... war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.... It is for us, the living, ... to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is ... for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln: Address at the Dedication of the National
Cemetery at Gettysburg.