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KF5JRV > TODAY 19.11.25 13:04l 29 Lines 3538 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Nov 19
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KF5JRV
Sent: 251119/1139Z 16331@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.24
On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In fewer than 275 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought some four months earlier, was one of the single bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Over the course of three days, more than 45,000 men were killed, injured, captured or went missing. The battle also proved to be the turning point of the war: General Robert E. Leeâ€Ös defeat and retreat from Gettysburg marked the last Confederate invasion of Northern territory and the beginning of the Southern armyâ€Ös ultimate decline.
Charged by Pennsylvaniaâ€Ös governor, Andrew Curtin, to care for the Gettysburg dead, an attorney named David Wills bought 17 acres of pasture to turn into a cemetery for the more than 7,500 who fell in battle. Wills invited Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators of the day, to deliver a speech at the cemeteryâ€Ös dedication. Almost as an afterthought, Wills also sent a letter to Lincolnâ€öjust two weeks before the ceremonyâ€örequesting “a few appropriate remarks” to consecrate the grounds.
At the dedication, the crowd listened for two hours to Everett before Lincoln spoke. Lincolnâ€Ös address lasted just two or three minutes. The speech reflected his redefined belief that the Civil War was not just a fight to save the Union, but a struggle for freedom and equality for all, an idea Lincoln had not championed in the years leading up to the war.
The text of Lincoln's speech:
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 dedicateâ€öwe can not consecrateâ€öwe can not hallowâ€öthis 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 usâ€öthat from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotionâ€öthat we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vainâ€öthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedomâ€öand that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Reception of Lincolnâ€Ös Gettysburg Address was initially mixed, divided strictly along partisan lines. Nevertheless, the “little speech,” as he later called it, is thought by many today to be the most eloquent articulation of the democratic vision ever written.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
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