The Gettysburg Address

Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Isn't that neat? I finished reading Twilight to my students yesterday, so I decided to do what I used to do at the end of the day - look up some "This day in history" stuff, and that's what I found. It's a great speech, isn't it? And it was given by a true statesman, I believe. I wanted to rant about politics tonight, but I don't have enough time, so I'll just leave this little positive moment in history with you all:

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 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 this 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. . .and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . .shall not perish from this earth.