Now we are engaged in a great election, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We have endured four years of great loss of liberty since the last election. This after many former years of losing liberty in prior such elections. We have coming to a point in time where we will decide if those who here gave their lives and sacred honor for years in wars and elections so that this nation of liberty might live might have died or sacrificed in vain. It is altogether fitting and proper that we the current generations should have this opportunity to decide the future of this once great republic.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot improve upon, but we can destroy and hallow out liberty. The brave men and women, some still living and many dead, who struggled here for generations before us, who have saved it, and passed it on to us to pass it on to future generations have sacrificed far more than us so that we may vote to decide our future liberty. The country will note, and long remember how we vote here, it can never forget if we saved liberty for future generations here. It is for us the living and soon to be voting, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work for which they who fought and lived here before us 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 generations we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave much devotion and sacrifice—that we here highly resolve that these generations shall not have died or passed on to us liberty in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom on November 6, 2012— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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