Blog 200901053134

G is for Gettysburg. Blog 200901053134

Monday 5^th January 2009, Brighton, England.

Daisy, my other half, has gone to bed. And told me not to take too long a writing this blog. So this will be a quicky. I already told you, I like to be efficient and brief. If any defence were needed for that, I understand that Lincoln's speech only lasted three minutes but was held up as a expression of the democratic spirit.

The Gettysburg address is 246 words long and was given as a warm up speech for the main speaker Edward Everitt at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Created to bury the dead of the Gettysburg Battle, where over 20,000 soldiers died. I'm sure most of you have heard it, but just as a reminder, I reproduce it below.

The Gettysburg Address, Washington, 19^th November 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

Eric.