Abraham Lincoln, "Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863."

            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 not, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget wheat 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.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream," 28 August 1963 [March on Washington, D. C., delivered at the Lincoln Memorial] (from A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. J. M. Washington [SF: Harper & Row, 1986], pp. 217-220]

             . . . Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.  It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

            But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

            So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.  In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.  When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.  This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

            It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned.  Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, American has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." . . .

            So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream, that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed--we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

            I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

            I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

            I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today!

            I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama . . . .

            I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. . . . [biblical paraphrase]

            So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

            Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

            Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

            Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

            Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

            But not only that.

            Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

            Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

            Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

            And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants—will be able to join hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

*****

“Fourscore” & “Fivescore” = 80 & 100 (a "score" = 20); such archaic terms evoke the language of the King James translation of Bible, which appears contemporaneously with the poetry of Shakespeare, and thus gains a status as "God's English."