LINCOLN'S ADRESS AT GETTYSBURG, 1863


     It's great to be here in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Lincoln and I appreciate the hospitallity you have shown us during our stay.  I wish that I could say that everyone loves it here.  I met a soldier who told me that he would rather have died at gettysburg than have to live in Philadelphia.
    I could go on like this all	day, but let us	be serious for a moment.  Eightyseven years ago	our ancestors brought forth on this continent a	new notion, conceived and dedicated to the proposition that all	men are	made pretty much the same.
     Now,we are	engaged	in a real big civil war, testing whether that nation conceived and dedicated like that can endure for very long.  We are meat on a real	big battle field of that war.  We have come to dedicate	some of	that field, as a memento for those who here gave their livers that that	nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper	that we	should do this,	and I am not at	all sorry that I came.
     But, let's face it, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not even hollow out--this ground.  The brave men, living or dead, who straggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or subtract,multiply or divide.  The world can never forget what they did here.
     It	is rather for us to be here dedicated to the real big task before us.  It is for us the	living,	rather,	to be dedicated	here to	the incomplete work which they who fought here have thus far so	nobly advanced--that from those	honored	dead we	take increased devotion	to that	cause for which	they gave their	last full measure of devotion that this	nation,	under God, shall have a	new birth of freedom--and that government of americans,	by americans, for americans, shall not perish from the earth.