Vietnam War Memorial Post 639

  Back to Patriotism:

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 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 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,

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863