The Financial Redress

Three score and four years ago our fathers brought forth upon this earthen sphere, a new order conceived in economic liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all trade is created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great idea war, testing whether trade, or any human interaction so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great trading floor of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of our future income, as a resting place for those banks who here gave their shares that financial markets 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 – liberal trade. The brave institutions, past and present, who traded 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 remaining, 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 failed institutions we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these liberal efforts shall not have died in vain; that this world under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this world order of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.