Posted 9:13 am Tuesday, February 12, 2013
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Lincoln's speech remains powerful
Abraham Lincoln has been getting quite a bit of attention lately. There's the Oscar-nominated film, of course, but also President Barack Obama has been doing his level best to evoke Lincoln.
As columnist Mona Charen pointed out recently, “[Obama] swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. He has asked to give the State of the Union address on Lincoln's birthday. He rode to Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln's in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln's critics.”
But that's not really fair to Lincoln, who stands above fray of today's petty politics.
And as today is the 204nd anniversary of the birth of Lincoln, it seems appropriate to take a fresh look at the founder of the modern Republican Party's most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address.
It's powerful — short, to the point, and moving in its words and imagery.
And all too often, it's learned too early, perhaps, to have the lasting effect it should have on us. Learned too early, and forgotten too soon.
In fact, it's not really a speech the very young can truly comprehend, with its focus on war, on the fallen soldiers, and the ideas for which they died. Children can recite it, but they cannot yet understand its full impact.
And as today is the 204nd anniversary of the birth of Lincoln, it seems appropriate to take a fresh look at the founder of the modern Republican Party's most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address.
It's powerful — short, to the point, and moving in its words and imagery.
And all too often, it's learned too early, perhaps, to have the lasting effect it should have on us. Learned too early, and forgotten too soon.
In fact, it's not really a speech the very young can truly comprehend, with its focus on war, on the fallen soldiers, and the ideas for which they died. Children can recite it, but they cannot yet understand its full impact.
So let's review the words again. Here's Lincoln's final draft of the speech:
“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.”
“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.”
