"We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live." These words of President Lincoln at Gettysburg, will be read this morning at Ground Zero by New York Governor George Pataki.
It will be the only oration at the final resting place of 2,801 victims of the attack a year ago on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
It is as if no mere present day politician could find the words to match Lincoln and do justice to the enormity of the trauma and grief that New York has experienced.
Just like the Gettysburg field, the pit where the towers once stood has become hallowed ground for New Yorkers and all Americans. Every day for a year hundreds of tourists have come, like pilgrims, to pay homage.
They line the open south side of the empty pit from which 1.8 million tons of debris has been removed to look in awe at the scale of the devastation.
Some, like police officer Steve Campbell who lost his wife Jill in the twin towers, find themselves drawn to the site. "It's nice to see New York and America hasn't forgotten," he said on the viewing deck.
"This is still a fresh wound for the city. It is very emotional for me." For others, like Wendy Doremus, whose husband, photographer Bill Biggart, was the only journalist killed on September 11th, it is still too painful, a year on, to contemplate even going the short distance down town from her home on Broadway.
"I find it too distressing," she told me. "I will wait until there is a proper memorial."
It will be a tough day in particular for the firefighters who have had to cope with a year of 353 memorial services.
The last was held just on Monday, for 48-year-old fire-fighter Thomas Kuveikis, whose remains, like most of the victims, have not been identified.
This morning, long before dawn, bagpipe and drum processions of firemen, police and rescue services will begin walking from the outer reaches of the four boroughs, some starting as early as 1.00 a.m., to reach Ground Zero in time for the commemoration ceremonies.
At 8.46 a.m., the precise time when the first plane descended from a Mediterranean blue sky to smash into the north tower, there will be a minute's silence, followed by church bells pealing out over the city.
Governor Pataki will then read the Gettsyburg address, delivered by Lincoln on November 19th 1863 as a "few appropriate remarks" to recall the Union dead.
Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the hero of that day and of the following days and weeks for the way he calmed and organised the stricken city, will begin reading the names of the dead as the families walk down the ramp for the first time into the 16-acre pit to lay roses and other mementos.
It will be a moment of closure for a city that has clung to its grieving.
For other New Yorkers of course it will be a day of just trying to cope, in abnormally hot weather, with traffic snarl-ups as foreign dignitaries arrive for the ceremonies and for a sitting of the UN General Assembly where President Bush will speak tomorrow. Mr Bush will arrive in New York this evening and deliver an address to the nation from Ellis Island, through which so many immigrants arrived to create what Lincoln called "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal".
"Tomorrow's going to be a hard day for a lot of Americans," said Mr Bush before setting out. "It's going to be a day of tears and a day of prayer and a day of national resolve. It's also going to be a day to confirm the values that make us unique and great."
It will also be a day of apprehension. The Big Apple will be on edge.
Since "nine-eleven" it has been impossible to avoid the thought, however fleeting, when entering the subway or taking a high elevator, that something might happen.
Today it will be on everyone's minds, especially after US Attorney General John Ashcroft warned yesterday that the level of nation-wide alert against terrorist attack had been raised from yellow, the middle of a five-level scale, to orange, from "elevated" to "high", for the first time since March. The commemorations will climax this evening with the lighting of an eternal flame in Battery Park attended by the representatives of countries of victims.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowan, will be there, representing Ireland, from which an estimated 20 per cent of the victims were descended.