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.”
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.
My class had just presented the Thanksgiving play for our 5-8th grade school and we were having a small party. Some time after 2:30EST (probably after Walter Cronkite announced it) our principal Mrs. Ross came on the PA. She was one of those administrators who could quell a riot just by showing up (maybe like your Gold Braid Chief, TCinLA) so the entire school got very quiet. And she told us that the President had been killed. A boy cheered - Culpeper County, VA is still very red - but was immediately quelled by another student.
Now, as a retired educator, I wonder... did the teachers have any warning? I remember the day of the Sandy Hook massacre (may Alex Jones rot in hell) our cellphones started pinging as it went from teacher to teacher, “Pray for an elementary school in Connecticut, there’s been a shooting.” As an elementary school, we felt the horror so strongly. What must our teachers have felt in 1963?
Probably as upset as we were. There weren't any people other than those 70+ who could remember a president being assassinated (they'd have remembered McKinley).
in my fifth-grade class, my extremely brilliant teacher made us all memorize it, and I remember it wasn't especially difficult to do.
as for 11/22/63, I was in the tenth grade. I ordinarily took a bus to get to HS because it was about two-and-a-half miles. but that day we all walked home and nobody said ANYTHING.
I was in the Navy that day. We had a big inspection on the old USS Rustbucket, then moored at NAS North Island in San Diego. When the personnel inspection was over in the early morning, we were released to go on the base. Four of us decided to go the EM Club and have breakfast. We saw a Gold Braid Chief (his "crow" of rank and hashmarks of service in gold braid, signifying "perfect service" - those people were considered to sit to God's right) Aviation Boatswain's Mate in dress uniform came running down the street, yelling "The President's been shot!" One of my friends called "Hey Chief - that's not funny!" He came over to us, gave us that "Chief's look" that could turn a sailor to stone, and said: "I said. The. President. Has. Been. Shot. This. Is. No. Joke. Isthatclear???" "Yes Chief!"
We went back to the ship in time to see Walter Cronkite on TV announce Kennedy's death. I spent the rest of the weekend at my girlfriend's house with her family and some other friends in our group, just sitting there silently watching the TV.
I hate that a toddler like you then had that as one of your earliest memories, but it likely had some bit to do with you growing up to be the admirable person you are now. That doesn't make it "good" but it does mean you were even then able to learn from what was going on.
I was in the 4th grade when my teacher, Mrs. White, went to the classroom door where our principal was waiting. This was very unusual. When she came back to us, she had tears in her eyes and told us what happened to President Kennedy.
"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.
Penfist, it is always good to read the paragraph from the Address that you quoted. As for the emancipation of the slaves that in itself is incomplete. I would call this lack of resolution turbulence above and below the surface. It pocks '...the land of the free and home of the brave!'
I get teary eyed reading this. Always did, but the last few years I’m even more likely to make a spectacle of myself. Such wisdom and compassion, and a genuine understanding of what makes the nation unique among mankind. And all of it on the edge of being frittered away.
Reading the Gettysburg Address this morning took me back to elementary school, where I learned to be an American. The pledge of allegiance, the American Flag, the American Revolution, Washington and the cherry tree, World War II, Rosie the Riveter, American War Bonds, igloos and tepees, the American Indian, Brotherhood and the Gettysburg Address. Respect, discipline, homework, working well with others and the teachers. They were serious and funny, strict, easy to understand and boring. Mostly, they liked us and let us and our parents know how we were doing by filling out Report Cards, and they kept us together, whether we liked or not.
Agree with Tom. Fern, you really nailed that time. All so clear in memory. And the "standard" curriculum, such as it was, meant that all over the country students were reading the same thing. I could generally expect that first year students at Oberlin had read the same shakespeare or poetry iand other general things. Not when I retired. (Not arguing for the same works over decades, but a "general" culture across all sorts of divisions.....
With better education on all those similarities, that should still be the case. Unfortunately, too many kids arrive at college today having to spend their freshman year taking "remedial" classes for all the stuff the system failed to properly teach them in high school.
That is the finest speech ever given in our nation, not one word of it is out of place. If it doesn’t move you, you need to reread it until it does. 👍👍🙏
In America, I believe that this is one of the most analyzed speeches. Perhaps because teachers know that Lincoln packed it with stuff that was based on historical concepts that were accessible to any mind, spoken in the "King James English". This marvelous summation of justification of the violence that men in lofty chambers thought was needed to protect their livelihood. Sad that the process of evolution of rights still has to be one way or the other. But as long as our government has 3 chambers working the process legitimately, we might persevere.
These words call us to a new dedication to the continual transformation and recreation of this nation dedicated to the noble 'experiment' of freedom and government of the people, by the people, for the people. A sacred text for this Nation. Lincoln was inspired in a way few have been. Thank you for posting TC.
based on every school I ever worked in (ending almost exactly eleven years ago), nope.
we've discussed this before. but I can add that when I was working (in both middle schools and high schools) "rote" was considered evil, even to the extent of "policy" forbidding that any time be wasted in class drilling the times tables. at the time, my comment was "what the fuck?" and that's still right where I am now.
maybe the policy was based on the notion that every kid uses a calculator now. big, big mistake.
Add that edumacational stupidity to "Whole Language" reading education where a kid was supposed to learn to read by osmosis from sitting in the vicinity of a "Great Book," and you know why the generation now in their 40s and early 50s are mostly functionally illiterate.
The degree Ed.D. should be abolished and its holders stuffed in rockets and fired into the sun. Along with all MBA's.
No. I learned phonics because my two grandmothers were teachers and they taught me before I sent to school. Our 1st grade teacher taught phonics, but the next year they "improved" things with "word recognition" till the reader ran into a word they didn't recognize and didn't have the ability to deal with (as they would have with phonics). This was the first step to functional illiteracy. My brother and sister both got this and neither liked reading as a result. This was followed by "new" math that created math illiteracy. Then they came up with "whole language". Finally when that was such an abject failure that the California Legislature zeroed out the budget line for the perfesserator of edumacation who invented it, thereby getting her ass out of San Bernardino State University (i.e., Cow College U), they brought back phonics some 20 years ago, then quickly added "teach to the test" for No Child Left Uneducated to keep their perfect record of creating a nation of intellectual morons. If all the Ed.Ds of the past 70 years had never existed, American education would still work.
exactly. although I've worked with some excellent people with Ed.D. degrees, but that excellence had nothing to do with their degrees.
on the other hand, an MBA isn't just worthless (my understanding is that at the "best" universities, the content is mostly just schmoozing about "case histories), it looks like it's guaranteed to make people worse than they were before they got to those universities.
I'm told that the skills you actually NEED to run a business (something I've always been allergic to even considering) are taught at the undergraduate level.
The fact that war and violence are a feature and not a 'bug' of human existence in this world is an ugly and terrible truth. The causes of war are many and varied, but the one root cause is our imperfection as human beings, a condition which will never change. There is nothing glorious about war, nothing that should be honored or praised or revered, except the courage and the sacrifice of those who, when called upon to defend the freedom and liberties of not only themselves but of others whom they do not know and never will, stand and deliver on behalf of that freedom and those liberties, and in doing so often give that last full measure of devotion to the only cause that's worthy of that sacrifice.
The history of our country is one of an imperfect union struggling to become a more perfect one. It has by turns been beautiful and ugly, peaceful and bloody. And sadly, some of that blood has been shed in less than righteous causes, a reflection of our imperfections. And this should chasten and humble us all. But it should not dissuade us from acknowledging that ours is, indeed, the freest nation on the face of the earth, offering the greatest opportunity for the perpetuation of that freedom and the liberties and all the benefits it brings to every single one of us, an opportunity paid for on the soil at Gettysburg and in countless other places since then as well.
Lincoln was, as all of us are, imperfect in some ways, as evidenced by his mistake in saying that the world would little note nor long remember what was said that day all those years ago. That we remember at all speaks to the power of those few words, the power of their perfection in noting what is honorable among men even as they act in less than perfect ways. It is, I believe, a credit to us as a people that most of us understand the importance of those words and understand them in a way that goes to the very marrow of our bones as Americans. But we should also understand that it is our duty to pass that on to those who come after us, lest the words and the ideals they give life to in this world fade and be forgotten. Doing so will be a measure of our own devotion to the cause for which so many gave the fullest one of all.
This speech continues to ring doesn't it? I posted it on my FB page as a reminder that the current gop, filled as it is with fascist dictator wannabes, or at least nasty autocrats, no longer possess any imagination or ideas that create an opportunity for the future. No. We are living in a world that is only more of the same. This worldview and its attendant violence, imperialism, and the plundering of human dignity are fully present in DeSantis, McCarthy (who is so weak as to little more than dishwater, but his weakness endangers everyone), and the others in the band of dullards, dolts, and derivators (made up word for those who derive their power from some strong man or other). And now of course there is little smelly musk and orangeman. Let twitter finally fail in flames, like the trash that it is. If only we could somehow keep the dimwitted media from reporting on the various idiot tweets that come from this crowd of miscreants. Tweets. Gives birds a bad name.
TC…Senator Whitehouse’s investigation into ‘how the right wing bought the Supreme Court seats ‘ Must be broadcast to all concerned readers of substack.
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.
I was in fifth grade as well that day. 💔 Glad your mom encouraged you. ❤️🩹
My class had just presented the Thanksgiving play for our 5-8th grade school and we were having a small party. Some time after 2:30EST (probably after Walter Cronkite announced it) our principal Mrs. Ross came on the PA. She was one of those administrators who could quell a riot just by showing up (maybe like your Gold Braid Chief, TCinLA) so the entire school got very quiet. And she told us that the President had been killed. A boy cheered - Culpeper County, VA is still very red - but was immediately quelled by another student.
Now, as a retired educator, I wonder... did the teachers have any warning? I remember the day of the Sandy Hook massacre (may Alex Jones rot in hell) our cellphones started pinging as it went from teacher to teacher, “Pray for an elementary school in Connecticut, there’s been a shooting.” As an elementary school, we felt the horror so strongly. What must our teachers have felt in 1963?
Probably as upset as we were. There weren't any people other than those 70+ who could remember a president being assassinated (they'd have remembered McKinley).
in my fifth-grade class, my extremely brilliant teacher made us all memorize it, and I remember it wasn't especially difficult to do.
as for 11/22/63, I was in the tenth grade. I ordinarily took a bus to get to HS because it was about two-and-a-half miles. but that day we all walked home and nobody said ANYTHING.
I was in the Navy that day. We had a big inspection on the old USS Rustbucket, then moored at NAS North Island in San Diego. When the personnel inspection was over in the early morning, we were released to go on the base. Four of us decided to go the EM Club and have breakfast. We saw a Gold Braid Chief (his "crow" of rank and hashmarks of service in gold braid, signifying "perfect service" - those people were considered to sit to God's right) Aviation Boatswain's Mate in dress uniform came running down the street, yelling "The President's been shot!" One of my friends called "Hey Chief - that's not funny!" He came over to us, gave us that "Chief's look" that could turn a sailor to stone, and said: "I said. The. President. Has. Been. Shot. This. Is. No. Joke. Isthatclear???" "Yes Chief!"
We went back to the ship in time to see Walter Cronkite on TV announce Kennedy's death. I spent the rest of the weekend at my girlfriend's house with her family and some other friends in our group, just sitting there silently watching the TV.
I hate that a toddler like you then had that as one of your earliest memories, but it likely had some bit to do with you growing up to be the admirable person you are now. That doesn't make it "good" but it does mean you were even then able to learn from what was going on.
I was in the 4th grade when my teacher, Mrs. White, went to the classroom door where our principal was waiting. This was very unusual. When she came back to us, she had tears in her eyes and told us what happened to President Kennedy.
"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.
Penfist, it is always good to read the paragraph from the Address that you quoted. As for the emancipation of the slaves that in itself is incomplete. I would call this lack of resolution turbulence above and below the surface. It pocks '...the land of the free and home of the brave!'
The continuing task for today---the rot continues.....
Yes indeed.
I get teary eyed reading this. Always did, but the last few years I’m even more likely to make a spectacle of myself. Such wisdom and compassion, and a genuine understanding of what makes the nation unique among mankind. And all of it on the edge of being frittered away.
Reading the Gettysburg Address this morning took me back to elementary school, where I learned to be an American. The pledge of allegiance, the American Flag, the American Revolution, Washington and the cherry tree, World War II, Rosie the Riveter, American War Bonds, igloos and tepees, the American Indian, Brotherhood and the Gettysburg Address. Respect, discipline, homework, working well with others and the teachers. They were serious and funny, strict, easy to understand and boring. Mostly, they liked us and let us and our parents know how we were doing by filling out Report Cards, and they kept us together, whether we liked or not.
You nailed that time, Fern.
Thank you for this morning's read, Tom.
Agree with Tom. Fern, you really nailed that time. All so clear in memory. And the "standard" curriculum, such as it was, meant that all over the country students were reading the same thing. I could generally expect that first year students at Oberlin had read the same shakespeare or poetry iand other general things. Not when I retired. (Not arguing for the same works over decades, but a "general" culture across all sorts of divisions.....
With better education on all those similarities, that should still be the case. Unfortunately, too many kids arrive at college today having to spend their freshman year taking "remedial" classes for all the stuff the system failed to properly teach them in high school.
Too true. More to say but not this evening.....
That is the finest speech ever given in our nation, not one word of it is out of place. If it doesn’t move you, you need to reread it until it does. 👍👍🙏
In America, I believe that this is one of the most analyzed speeches. Perhaps because teachers know that Lincoln packed it with stuff that was based on historical concepts that were accessible to any mind, spoken in the "King James English". This marvelous summation of justification of the violence that men in lofty chambers thought was needed to protect their livelihood. Sad that the process of evolution of rights still has to be one way or the other. But as long as our government has 3 chambers working the process legitimately, we might persevere.
It's the 3rd chamber that's so very concerning
“legitimately “ Such a well chosen word! I hope it holds true!
As important a message today as it was then...
These words call us to a new dedication to the continual transformation and recreation of this nation dedicated to the noble 'experiment' of freedom and government of the people, by the people, for the people. A sacred text for this Nation. Lincoln was inspired in a way few have been. Thank you for posting TC.
Should be required reading and discussion in schools.
I know it used to be; I hope it still is.
based on every school I ever worked in (ending almost exactly eleven years ago), nope.
we've discussed this before. but I can add that when I was working (in both middle schools and high schools) "rote" was considered evil, even to the extent of "policy" forbidding that any time be wasted in class drilling the times tables. at the time, my comment was "what the fuck?" and that's still right where I am now.
maybe the policy was based on the notion that every kid uses a calculator now. big, big mistake.
Add that edumacational stupidity to "Whole Language" reading education where a kid was supposed to learn to read by osmosis from sitting in the vicinity of a "Great Book," and you know why the generation now in their 40s and early 50s are mostly functionally illiterate.
The degree Ed.D. should be abolished and its holders stuffed in rockets and fired into the sun. Along with all MBA's.
...and I still can't figure out why people have problems with phonics. isn't that how most of us learned to read?
No. I learned phonics because my two grandmothers were teachers and they taught me before I sent to school. Our 1st grade teacher taught phonics, but the next year they "improved" things with "word recognition" till the reader ran into a word they didn't recognize and didn't have the ability to deal with (as they would have with phonics). This was the first step to functional illiteracy. My brother and sister both got this and neither liked reading as a result. This was followed by "new" math that created math illiteracy. Then they came up with "whole language". Finally when that was such an abject failure that the California Legislature zeroed out the budget line for the perfesserator of edumacation who invented it, thereby getting her ass out of San Bernardino State University (i.e., Cow College U), they brought back phonics some 20 years ago, then quickly added "teach to the test" for No Child Left Uneducated to keep their perfect record of creating a nation of intellectual morons. If all the Ed.Ds of the past 70 years had never existed, American education would still work.
exactly. although I've worked with some excellent people with Ed.D. degrees, but that excellence had nothing to do with their degrees.
on the other hand, an MBA isn't just worthless (my understanding is that at the "best" universities, the content is mostly just schmoozing about "case histories), it looks like it's guaranteed to make people worse than they were before they got to those universities.
I'm told that the skills you actually NEED to run a business (something I've always been allergic to even considering) are taught at the undergraduate level.
The fact that war and violence are a feature and not a 'bug' of human existence in this world is an ugly and terrible truth. The causes of war are many and varied, but the one root cause is our imperfection as human beings, a condition which will never change. There is nothing glorious about war, nothing that should be honored or praised or revered, except the courage and the sacrifice of those who, when called upon to defend the freedom and liberties of not only themselves but of others whom they do not know and never will, stand and deliver on behalf of that freedom and those liberties, and in doing so often give that last full measure of devotion to the only cause that's worthy of that sacrifice.
The history of our country is one of an imperfect union struggling to become a more perfect one. It has by turns been beautiful and ugly, peaceful and bloody. And sadly, some of that blood has been shed in less than righteous causes, a reflection of our imperfections. And this should chasten and humble us all. But it should not dissuade us from acknowledging that ours is, indeed, the freest nation on the face of the earth, offering the greatest opportunity for the perpetuation of that freedom and the liberties and all the benefits it brings to every single one of us, an opportunity paid for on the soil at Gettysburg and in countless other places since then as well.
Lincoln was, as all of us are, imperfect in some ways, as evidenced by his mistake in saying that the world would little note nor long remember what was said that day all those years ago. That we remember at all speaks to the power of those few words, the power of their perfection in noting what is honorable among men even as they act in less than perfect ways. It is, I believe, a credit to us as a people that most of us understand the importance of those words and understand them in a way that goes to the very marrow of our bones as Americans. But we should also understand that it is our duty to pass that on to those who come after us, lest the words and the ideals they give life to in this world fade and be forgotten. Doing so will be a measure of our own devotion to the cause for which so many gave the fullest one of all.
Greatest understatement of all-time. ". . . the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here".
This speech continues to ring doesn't it? I posted it on my FB page as a reminder that the current gop, filled as it is with fascist dictator wannabes, or at least nasty autocrats, no longer possess any imagination or ideas that create an opportunity for the future. No. We are living in a world that is only more of the same. This worldview and its attendant violence, imperialism, and the plundering of human dignity are fully present in DeSantis, McCarthy (who is so weak as to little more than dishwater, but his weakness endangers everyone), and the others in the band of dullards, dolts, and derivators (made up word for those who derive their power from some strong man or other). And now of course there is little smelly musk and orangeman. Let twitter finally fail in flames, like the trash that it is. If only we could somehow keep the dimwitted media from reporting on the various idiot tweets that come from this crowd of miscreants. Tweets. Gives birds a bad name.
Yes to all!!!
This was a perfect post for the day and the time we live in.
One of my favorite speeches by a great leader.
🗽
'Like' doesn't go quite far enough.
TC…Senator Whitehouse’s investigation into ‘how the right wing bought the Supreme Court seats ‘ Must be broadcast to all concerned readers of substack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2EWaftzNvM
His speeches are on YouTube