[Intro]
"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

[Verse]
Four score and seven years ago our forefathers 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 the 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
For 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 - and 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