What does Lincoln described as the impact of those who fought at Gettysburg?

Lincoln says that the men who died at Gettysburg have consecrated the battleground (part of which is now the cemetery Lincoln helped to dedicate with his speech) through their deaths. The impact of their sacrifice is profound, Lincoln said, because it reminded Americans of their need for sacrifice. In the end, the struggle is about whether or not a republic (a government "of the people, by the people, for the people") can exist. To lose the struggle is inconceivable, and the soldiers died to ensure that the nation not only survived, but experienced what Lincoln called a "new birth of freedom." In short, Lincoln says that their deaths did what many historians say he strove to do with his speech: they elevated the purpose of the war from a conflict ostensibly about secession to a war about human freedom and its survival in the United States of America.