Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was given at the dedication of a cemetery created for the dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg. It reflects our feelings about those who died to defend our freedom, both recently and in generations past. It says, in part:
"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 ….
"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 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 the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
