Given the task definition and input, reply with output. Given a text, write a compressed version of it in a single sentence.

As American history took its course in the decades that followed the "war for the nation," we managed to betray the inner meaning of the great sacrifice that Lincoln sought to consecrate at Gettysburg. We absorbed the war into the preexisting political and legal vocabulary.
Following the "War of the nation" we betrayed the meaning of the sacrifice that ALincoln sought to consecrate at Gettysburg.