As I was thinking about Memorial Day this year, I thought of this famous speech from Abraham Lincoln. I have highlighted a few sections that stand out for me, but I love the whole thing. Please take a few minutes to read it! This is the speech that Lincoln said would not remember...Let us not forget.
The 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 battlefield 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 cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we
cannot 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.
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