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1. “Four Score and seven years ago

87 years ago in 1776

(a score is 20 years) x 4 = 80 years plus 7 more years.

(1863 – 87 years = 1776!)

 

2. our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and other patriots declared our independence from England and started a new nation that began with liberty and the idea that all people are created equal.

 

3. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

Now we’re in the middle of a Civil War, and it’s testing whether we or any nation that is dedicated to liberty and the equality of human beings, can survive.

 

4. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

Here we are at Gettysburg.

 

5. 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.

We’ve come to dedicate this battlefield to the brave soldiers who died so that our Nation could survive.

 

6. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Dedicating this battlefield is the right thing to do.

7. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground.

But, we cannot make this ground holy or special.

 

8. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The brave men who fought at Gettysburg have already done that. Nothing we say here today can add or subtract from their sacrifice.

 

9. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

The world won’t notice or remember what we say here today [boy, was Abe wrong], but it can never forget their sacrifice.

 

10. 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.

We need to finish what they started.

 

11. 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 –

Rather than dedicate the battlefield and soldiers graves, we need to dedicate ourselves to the cause for which they died. We’re determined to show that they didn’t die for nothing-

 

12. that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

So that our country, under God’s protection and with his help, will have even more freedom [free the slaves] – and that democratic government will not disappear from the earth.
 

[However, Abe’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is probably the clearest description of a democracy that has ever been given.]