Lincoln #AtoZChallenge

On November 19, 1863, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, gave a short speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

 This is the background of why Lincoln was there that day.  For my non-United States readers, please know that our country was in the midst of a civil war.  Lincoln was President to a country that had lost 11 states between late 1860 and the first part of 1861.  A major battle in the war that followed took place July 1, 2 and 3rd, 1863, in Gettysburg, killing 7,058 people on both sides, and another 5,000 or so horses and mules.

Lincoln wasn't even the featured speaker of the day.  That honor went to one Rev. Edward Everett, a man who had served as a Congressman, a Secretary of State, a Senator and the Governor of Massachusetts.  Everett was a noted orator.  In those days, Presidents were not expected to give speeches.  The speech is recognized today as one of the greatest in United States history.

Everett spoke for some two hours and Lincoln for about two minutes.  Later, he said of Lincoln's speech (see below for text)  "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." Generations of school children were required to memorize Lincoln's speech.

When you walk through modern day Gettysburg, Lincoln is everywhere.

 

In this work of art called "Return Visit", which is more realistic than the photo shows, Lincoln speaks to a modern day tourist.

Lincoln is on bicycle racks.

In our motel room. (There was also a portrait of Lincoln, but my picture didn't come out well.)

At the Gettysburg battlefield.

Here is Lincoln's speech.  It's hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of a President whose country is torn apart and at war, but the effort is worth it.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
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.

"L" day in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  My theme:   "From Florida to Vermont With Stops In Between".