For Memorial Day: the Gettysburg Address

President Lincoln, 1863

In keeping with this weekend's solemn Memorial Day observations, and in conjunction with the story of my Great-Great Grandfather in A Civil War Soldier, and the boy soldier in Writer's Challenge #4, I have chosen a famous speech by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, to commemorate this day.

From The History Place:

The Battle of Gettysburg occurred over three hot summer days, July 1 to July 3, 1863, around the small market town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It began as a skirmish but by its end involved 160,000 Americans and effectively decided the fate of the Union.

On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln went to the Battlefield to dedicate it as a national cemetery. The main orator, Edward Everett of Massachusetts, delivered a two hour formal address. The president then had his turn. He spoke in his high, penetrating voice, and in a little over two minutes delivered this speech, surprising many in the audience by its shortness and leaving many others quite unimpressed.

Over time, however, his speech with its ending words - government of the People, by the People, for the People - have come to symbolize the definition of democracy itself.

Read President Lincoln's handwritten text of The Gettysburg Address.

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 cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot 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.

These stirring words truly define our nation and honor all Americans who "gave the last full measure of devotion" and died for our freedom. Bless them all! And to you who served us in the past and who wear the uniform of the United States today, defending our Constitutional rights and liberty from enemies foreign and domestic, we say Thank You and Bless You!