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Transcript of the "Hay Draft"
of the Gettysburg Address
(Differences between the texts of the two drafts are indicated by emphasis
type. Please note that the Nicolay and Hay versions of the Gettysburg
Address differ somewhat from the generally printed Bliss version.)
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 here on a great battlefield of
that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting
place for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that
we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate
-- we can not 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 can never forget what they did
here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here
to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on.
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 here gave the last full measure
of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
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