"A few appropriate remarks..."

When I was in eighth grade, our Social Studies teacher gave us an assignment - recite from memory Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  In hindsight, it really wasn't that difficult of an assignment, given the fact that there are only 272 words of text to memorize.  Unfortunately, even though I had memorized the speech, I never fully appreciated (at least until many years later) the significance of the text itself.  These words are powerful, and they are packed with symbolism. 

The speech was delivered on November 19, 1863 (yesterday marks the 153rd anniversary of the speech) at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  Gettysburg had been the site of an epic battle between the Union's Army of the Potomac and the Confederate's Army of Northern Virginia only four and a half months prior to the dedication ceremony.  The battle marked a turning point in the Civil War and was at the time (and until the Battle of the Argonne Forest in World War I) the deadliest battle, in terms of lives lost, in our nation's history. 

The dedication ceremony's program started with a two-hour long speech by Edward Everett (who served as a U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, U.S. Secretary of State, and President of Harvard University).  The quality of a speech at that time was measured largely by its length - so by all measures of the day, Everett's speech was a great one!  Lincoln stood up at the end of Everett's speech to give "a few appropriate remarks."  In just 10 sentences and in a speech lasting just over 2 minutes, Lincoln was able to re-iterate the principles of liberty and equality originally stated in the Declaration of Independence.  In these 272 words, Lincoln redefined the Civil War not just as a struggle to maintain the Union (keeping all Confederate states as part of the United States of America), but also as a fight to preserve the individual rights of freedom and equality:

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 can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not 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.

Everett himself wrote Lincoln the following day, stating, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

It is a great speech - perhaps one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by a U.S. President.  Lincoln was a gifted orator, but the beauty and the power of his Gettysburg Address rests in its simplicity and its brevity.  I think the speech demonstrates the power of just a few simple words. 

With many of the struggles that we are going through as a country today, it is my hope that we will all rediscover Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and re-dedicate our lives to the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence, that we are all equal and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people" will endure forever.