It has been 150 years since President Lincoln visited the Gettysburg battlefield.
In years gone past, school children were given this speech as a lesson in memorization, history and public speaking. I don’t know if school kids are still ‘forced’ to memorize, but if they aren’t, I think they ought to be. These are profound words. These are words that continue to speak to us. On this, the 150th anniversary of the speech, we offer them up again for your thoughtful consideration:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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 on a great battle-field of that war. 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. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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 gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Thank you for posting, Steve. I was watching the news this morning and DC was holding a ceremony to commemorate the event. A Black couple had come all the way from Hawaii to attend as they felt it was that important. It is a great speech, brief and to the point.