Hey Princey!
Ah, I'm flattered.
I'm by no means an expert and the 19th C. is out of my general sphere of knowledge but I will offer you my opinion. By no means do not hold it to heart. My opinion is only my interpretation broken up into three parts as far as definition is concerned with the Address.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Lincoln starts off by giving credit, recognition and deep respect for the Four Fathers who with much grief, great losses (more than any American will ever know until they take it upon themselves to research their lives and back stories, etc.) managed by the skin of their teeth created a new nation, the US. The "all men are created equal" was an excerpt from the Declaration, when the Colonists signed away their allegiance to King George III and England. Thus, in Patrick Henry's booming voice, the young laywer stood at the First Continental Congress, and shouted, "I am not a Virginian! I am an American!"
In retrospect, when Lincoln borrowed that specific excerpt, he was directly referring that in the Revolutionary War, brother versus brother (Patriot versus Loyalist; a person still loyal to England) fought and killed each other just as in "this" current war, the mighty Civil War, brother versus brother fight once more to the bitter end; each driving one and another to an early grave over the prospect of defending the Articles of Confed. (south) and the Constitution (North). Of course, the ownership of Negros was always the back story of the persecution and discrimination since the Declaration was NOT written for African-Americans.
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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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.
Here, our President is attempting to convey that indeed we entered in "a great war," and "that nation, or any nation so conceived;" Lincoln was referring to when the US was initially created and the Revolutionary War in which soldiers locked horns from different countries. Soldiers, no matter the side they sought loyal too, surrendered their noble lives for the just cause of their own belief upon the battlefields and now, the past came full circle by the creation of the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War).
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In the last paragraph of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln again repeats himself from the first portion of his speech. When the last of the Signers - Charles Carroll - died, and more importantly when John Adams, Jefferson and Franklin were no longer, an outstanding chapter had not been finished of the nation they so strongly believed in. This chapter was recklessly left in shards of a ruined and secretive circle of a group of men that kept such documents so closely hidden, yet, the new generation had the responsibility of "the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause of which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom..."
I hope my interpretation made some sense to you. I'm am a firm believer that the American Revolution is very much akin, if not vaguely related to the American Civil War. As such, the Declaration, the document that Americans hold so dear, is directly responsible to the contribution of such an atrocity of human lives needlessly killed for the act of a document designed solely for the white upper class.
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I could foresee my opinions and general outlook in the Debate Forum with this article.
