UDEYANの四方山話

The Address by Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, Pensylvania on Novernber 19 in 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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 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 the earth.

（いまここで、私たちの前に残っている偉大な事業に捧げられるべき物は、正しくは私たちであって、・・・これらの名誉ある死から、私たちが、彼らがその命の最後の献身の限界を振り絞った動機への理解と自身による献身の誓いを深め、いまここで、彼らの死を決して無駄にはしないということを強く決意すること、つまり、この国が神の下で自由の新たな誕生を勝ち取るべきことを決意し、そして人民の、人民による、人民のための政府が地球上から消滅することはないと決意すべきなのです。）