National Cemetery at Keokuk, Iowa

Although this is not Gettysburg, and is not as large as the cemetery at Gettysburg, it is certainly impressive to see graves of those who died for the cause during the War Between the States. There are also soldiers from other wars buried here, as well. As I was walking around, the Gettysburg Address kept going through my mind, and then I walked up to this marker. I decided that I would use words far better than my own describe this experience. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this contineent, a new nation, conceived in liverty and dedicated to the propostion that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so coceived 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 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 strugled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long rmember 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 fough here thus far so mobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the freat task remaininf before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to tht cause for which they gave the last full measure of their 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 and for the people shall not perish from the earth.