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On This Day: Lincoln Delivers Gettysburg Address

President Abraham Lincoln had been invited to say a few words at the dedication of part of the battlefield in Gettysburg. He had, for some time, been planning on making some sort of public statement on the war. This event seemed the perfect opportunity. Being ever so humble, Lincoln did not expect the world to recall his words that somber day. 

It was with that humble thought that Lincoln, On This Day in 1863, Lincoln gave his now famous Gettysburg Address. 

I can recall having to memorize this in eighth grade (I think it was). Sadly, I do not recall my kids having to learn this.

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 battlefield 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.

Source

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. 19 November 1863. History.com

 

On This Day is a prompt to further explore historical events.
                

© Jeanne Ruczhak-Eckman, 2015
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