Gettysburg Address

      It was once a part of every school's curriculum, the Gettysburg Address. Students had to memorize it. I had to do this fifth grade. Some students learned it earlier, some later. All recognized it as a moving tribute to an idea written into our Constitution in 1776. 

     
      According to Wikipedia: the Gettysburg Address is a world-famous speech delivered by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (November 19, 1863) of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil War (July 1–3, 1863).

     The speech only took a little over three minutes to deliver and consisted of ten lines. It was over so quickly that the photographer assigned to capture the moment missed it entirely.

 

     These days the final words inspire me the most: "and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I mention this because our democracy is not guaranteed to survive the coming election. Our democracy is a fragile construct held together with people's best intentions, or as Lincoln liked to say, the better angels of our nature. This appeared in the final paragraph of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861. He certainly had a way with words. I am going to put his address to memory again as I watch the events unfold around our forthcoming election and the all important count of votes which will occur afterwards.

 

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.