In tribute to the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the USA - "that these dead shall not have died in vain"
The Civil World Address
Eleven score and five years ago we brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great 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. 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 people, 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 happened here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to their still unfinished work. 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 world 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.
[with a special thank you to Abraham Lincoln]
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