The President of the United States.
[Applause]
Resistance to the war was growing...
Mr. Lincoln needed to reinvigorate the people to explain to them...
...and perhaps himself why this endless plague of war must continue.
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 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.
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 here 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.
[Applause]
Silly flat and dish watery utterances of a man who must be pointed out
to intelligent foreigners as the President.
I've not had much time for foreign policy.