[ On the North plaque ]
1912
The Gift of
Edward Williams Marsh
Captain of Company -M-Second Connecticut Volunteers
Heavy Artillery
To the Town of New Milford
In Loving Memory of the Soldiers and Sailors
Of the Union Army and Navy
1861 1865
and of
Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States
1861 1865
Besides being in many skirmishes the New
Milford troops were engaged in the battles of
Gettysburg Cold Harbor
Petersburg Opeqvan.
Fisher's Hill
Cedar Creek
Sailors Creek
Fort Fisher
(South Facing Plaque): Four score 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 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 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.
Delivered at Gettysburg
November 19, 1863
by
Abraham Lincoln
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