150 Years ago, Today, The President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, gave the Gettysburg Address. This wise speech, a unique combination of great oration and brevity, deals with the notion that the democratic form of government may not survive the tides of time. It was right when Lincoln spoke, in those harsh times of the American Civil War. It is just as true nowadays, when other, less obvious but much more sophisticated threats rise on democracies in America and around the world. May the sagacity of this address light the paths of humanity forever. May governments of the people, by the people, for the people, Shall never perish from the Earth.
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 can not dedicate,
we can not consecrate,
we can not 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.
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