Commemorating the Gettysburg Address

Today is the 149th anniversary of the delivery of the Gettysburg Address. On November 19th, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address to dedicate the battlefield in the bloodiest skirmish during the war between the States as a resting place for the fallen.

Lincoln was said to have written his brief remarks on the back of an envelope, yet those scribbling still resonate today.

Photo of President Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address, 1863

 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.

One of the most stirring renditions of this concise but iconic 267 word speech was done by Johnny Cash.




Whether it is the Blues and the Grays or the Reds against the Blues, it is prudent to honor Lincoln's invocation 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.