MEDITATIONS AND MEMORIES

g

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery, November 19, 1863

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 power to to add or detract.  The world will little note, not long remember, what we say here; but it can never forgot 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 those honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they 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, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

God bless our Soldiers who have fought and died to make us a safer place to live. We give tribute to them on this Memorial Day 2010!