“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 battle-field 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 the 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 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 so far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain--that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom--and that the Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” These simple yet grand words greatly moved his hearers, and among the thousands could be heard sobs and broken cheers. On this occasion, Edward Everett, “New England’s most polished and graceful orator,” also spoke. And this was the difference between them--that while Everett made those present think only of him living in their admiration of his art, the listeners forgot Lincoln, and wept in thinking of the dead. But it is to Mr. Everett’s credit that on this occasion, speaking to the President, he said, “Ah! Mr. Lincoln, how gladly would I exchange my hundred pages to have been the author of your twenty lines.”