159 YEARS AGO TODAY
Gettysburg Address
Delivered at Gettysburg, Pa.
November 19th 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 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.”
Comments are for everyone
In my 5th grade class my teacher walked in with a face so pale she looked like she was going to faint. But she told us that President Kennedy had been assassinated. We were sent home. We were all devastated. It was also the same day we were going to recite famous speeches we were assigned . Mine was the Gettysburg Address. My teacher scheduled another day several weeks later for our speeches. I didn’t want to recite and told my mom. She said “well if you don’t who will?” “It’s more important now than it was 3 weeks ago when you wanted to recite the Gettysburg Address “ well my Mom was right. I did it with only a few memory lapses, but hopefully the point got through.
"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.”
The dead are silent, evermore. This nation did at least eventually emancipate the slaves but the ripples of that abominable institution are still ongoing today.