Pumpkinsburg Address

Four score and seven seasons ago, our Fore-Farmers brought forth upon this continent, a new Pumpkin, conceived in  the garden, and dedicated to the proposition that no two pumpkins are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil contest, testing whether Atlantic Giants, or any other Prize Winner pumpkins so conceived and so enormous, can break all records. We are met in a great pumpkin-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that pumpkin patch, as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that Atlantic Giant might thrive. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate- we can not hallow-this ground. The brave growers, living and dead, who have struggled here, have fertilized it, far above our poor power to add or detract soil amendments. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what we grew here. It is for us the fanatic growers, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who attempted to grow the record winner here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us pumpkin lovers to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us- that from these honored Atlantic Giants we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of growth– that we growers here highly resolve that these pumpkins shall not have grown in vain- that this pumpkin patch, under God, shall have a new birth of seedlings– and that the World Pumpkin Confederation of the growers, by the growers and for the growers, shall not perish from the earth.