This week is marks two of the most important anniversaries in American history from two very different generations. The one that is getting most of the attention is Friday’s 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, mostly because that day in Dallas is so vivid in our minds and we have footage of the event. But today is the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”
On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln spoke on that hallowed ground in Pennsylvania, just after the bloodiest battle of the war. “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,” Lincoln began, as he started the most famous 270-word speech in history.
He recognized that the nation was still in the midst of the bloody Civil War, which would not end until 1865. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” he said, noting that the war was the greatest test the country had faced up to that point. He didn’t forget the immediate reason for being there - dedicating the cemetery to those that died there.
In the final and longest paragraph, Lincoln put sentences together that still reverberate to this day. It seems amazing to think that Lincoln actually said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
He continued, “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 Associated Press notes that Joseph Ignatius Gilbert, a 21-year-old reporter who attended the speech, was in awe of Lincoln’s delivery. He even stopped taking notes, but thankfully, the president allowed the press to make copies of his text and it went around the country quickly.
You can actually tweet the Gettysburg Address in just 10 messages, but it’s important to look at the entire speech as a whole. It’s not too long and takes just a couple of minutes to read.
Last week, Ken Burns had several celebrities and politicians read the speech and the acclaimed Civil War filmmaker has done a new film on the address. It will air on PBS next year.
image: Wikimedia Commons
