Abraham Lincoln

I am on the road and where I am working I walked by a lithograph of President Abraham Lincoln giving his second Inaugural Address, where the last paragraph begins: "With malice toward none; with charity for all...". I looked, the flag in the print had a lot less stars than our current 50 star version.

But, the reason for this post is that this Wednesday is the anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address--two minutes that changed the nation--or so Author Gary Wills claims in his book, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Wills may be over the top, but the words of President Lincoln at the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery, honoring those who died at the Battle of Gettysburg in early July 1863 have stuck with us for almost a century and a half. The speech was given on a Thursday afternoon, the 19th of November 1863.

The speech is so short, I can quote it easily (this version is from Wikipedia):

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.

Regards -- Cliff