Gettysburg Address...145 years ago...Today

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 19, 1863

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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.

(The following is a paper written by me for Forensics class nearly 4 years ago now) 

‘Four score and seven years ago’ begins the well known quote. But how many of us know the story behind it?

In June of 1863, the Civil War had dragged on for two years, eradicating the hopes of both Southerners and Northerners that the war would be only a ‘breakfast spell’. Confederate General Robert E. Lee conceived a bold plan to crush the Union hopes and demoralize the support of the war by making the northern people feel that it was to big a price to pay. The Plan? He would march north into Pennsylvania, drawing the Union Army of the Potomac after him to destroy it. After which a peace treaty would be offered to Federal President Abraham Lincoln, who without an army, would be at the mercy of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Union and Confederate armies, the former under the command of George Meade and the latter under Robert E. Lee, meet at a little crossroads town. The fighting lasted three days. The climax came on the last day, when the Confederates sent 15,000 men, under the command of George Pickett, across open fields to assault entrenched Union soldiers at the top of Cemetery Ridge. This attack, known to history as Pickett’s Charge, failed to take the Ridge and left 10,000 men dead on the field. The Battle of Gettysburg, ending with the culmination of Pickett’s Charge was the turning point of the Civil War. The Confederacy was weakened and they never regained the supremacy they had lost. But only those of us who see the Civil War in retrospect realize the consequences that this battle had on the Confederacy and the Union. To the grieving families in the North and South, they only knew that, because of this battle, 51,000 of their fathers, their husbands, their sons and brothers were gone. On November 19, a cemetery for these dead was consecrated, on the land for which they had fought. It was at this consecration that Abraham Lincoln delivered his speech. He asked the remaining soldiers and people of the North to be dedicated to the unfinished work of the fallen soldiers,-that, in his own words, ‘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 for the earth.’