Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication

Don't miss the powerpoint presentation of the G-burg address.

"In 1886 [Henry W.]Grady, thirty-six years old, was invited to address the New England Society of New York, on the 266th anniversary to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. General Sherman, seated on the platform, was an honored guest, and the band played [I am not making this up] "Marching Through Georgia" before Grady was Introduced. Pronouncing the death of the Old South, he lauded the New South of Union and freedom and progress. And he offered Lincoln as the vibrant symbol not alone of reconciliation but of American character.

"Lincoln," he said, "comprehended within himself all the strength, and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of the republic." He was indeed, the first American, "the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, in whose ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in whose great soul the faults of both were lost."

--From "Lincoln in American Memory" by Merrill D. Peterson P. 46-48

Walt

"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."