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Four score and seven years ago
So began the message of a war-weary President Abraham Lincoln
A message written on the back of an envelope
On a train on the way to dedicate a battlefield
Where men from the north and south had died at Gettysburg Pennsylvania
Four score and seven years ago
Our forefathers brought forth on this continent
A new nation conceived in liberty
And dedicated in the proposition that all men are created equal
Now we're 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 the final resting place for those who here gave their lives
That that nation might live
It is all together fitting and proper thast we should do this
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate
We cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground
For the brave men living and dead who struggled here
Have consecreated it far above our poor power to add or detract
The world will little notice or long remember what we say here
But it can never forget what they did here
It is for us the living rather to be dedicasted here to the unfinished work
Which they who fought here have thus 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 gave the last full measure of devotion
That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
And that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom
And the government of the people, by the people
And for the people, shall not perish from the earth
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