Gettysburg

I've made some comments at the end.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

The Gettysburg Address

November 19, 1863

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers 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 battle-field 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 that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not 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 the earth."

What of their sacrifice? What of their spilled blood? Do we honor them with strength or complacency? What will we say to them, when we meet them on the other side of this life? All of us will have to answer for our deeds, and I feel that dishonoring the sacrifice of so many that died for our Republic will have to be answered for; particularly because we know that the Constitutional is a Divine document.

We have the opportunity before us to restore our Republic; to fight a different kind of battle; a battle we too must win.