145 years ago yesterday... - Printable Version +- Forums (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards) +-- Forum: The Parade Ground (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=2) +--- Forum: Historical Discussion (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=17) +--- Thread: 145 years ago yesterday... (/showthread.php?tid=48989)

145 years ago yesterday... - Steel God - 11-20-2008 Four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg, on the afternoon of Thursday 19 November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a "few appropriate remarks" at the dedication of the cemetery for fallen soldiers. After a 13,607 word speech by Edward Everett, the President’s address consisted of 10 sentences in 272 words. The Gettysburg Address is one of the greatest pieces of public oratory in history. 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. RE: 145 years ago yesterday... - Mike Abberton - 11-20-2008 I love the irony of the line "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." Sadly though, the latter part is probably even less true the first part. Mike