Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863, on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Four score 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 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 this 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 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 this earth.