USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -“For those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” This phrase refers to the soldiers that fought on this very field. Note that Lincoln picks up on the idea from the first two sentences, that is, they are fighting for the survival of the country – “so that that nation might live.”

Detailed explanation-2: -“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.

Detailed explanation-3: -The “unfinished work” to which Lincoln refers, “the great task remaining before us, ” is to put into practice the proposition to which this nation was and is dedicated: that all men are created equal. Miraculous though it was, the Constitution had left that work unfinished.

Detailed explanation-4: -That is the idea Lincoln refers to in this section of the speech: The Civil War was testing whether the United States, which was founded on liberty and equality, could survive.