question"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on 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 civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot
hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they
did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
here 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, for
the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863
The passage above is a selected portion of the ___________