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| Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
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| on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
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| dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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| Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
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| whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
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| dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-
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| field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
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| that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave
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| their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
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| fitting and proper that we should do this.
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| But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot
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| consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men,
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| living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it
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| far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
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| will little note nor long remember what we say here, but
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| it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
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| living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
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| work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
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| advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
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| great task remaining before us…that from these honored
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| dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
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| they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
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| highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
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| that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
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| freedom; and that government of the people, by the people,
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| for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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