“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 are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of 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 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 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 that 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 the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, 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.”

There have been but four instances in history in which great deeds have been celebrated in words as immortal as themselves:  the epitaph upon the dead Spartan band at Thermopylae; the words of Demosthenes on those who perished at Marathon; the speech of Webster in memory of those who laid down their lives at Bunker Hill; and these words of Lincoln on the hill at Gettysburg.  As he closed, and while his listeners were still sobbing, he grasped the hand of Mr. Everett, and said.  “I congratulate you on your success.”—­“Ah,” replied the orator, gracefully, “Mr. President, how gladly would I exchange all my hundred pages to have been the author of your twenty lines!”

I forbear to dwell longer on the events of the war.  The tide had turned, and the end was already foreseen.  Notwithstanding that Mr. Lincoln had proved the righteousness of his course, a great many people in the North—­and many even in his own party—­were opposed to his nomination for a second term.  The disaffected nominated Gen. Fremont, upon the platform of the suppression of the Rebellion, the Monroe doctrine, and the election of President and Vice-President by the direct vote of the people, and for one term only.  The Democratic party declared the war for the Union a failure, and very properly nominated McClellan.  It required a long time for the General to make up his mind in regard to accepting the nomination; and, in conversations upon the subject with a friend, Lincoln suggested that perhaps he might be entrenching.  The election was held, and Lincoln received a majority greater than was ever before given to a candidate for the presidency.  The people this time were like the Dutch farmer,—­they believed that “it was not best to swap horses when crossing a stream.”