The Gettysburg Address
"Fourscore 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."
President Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Soldier's National Cemetery
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
July 4, 2020
A Chronological and Superbly Documented Study .. by Military History Online:
Background Music: "Battle Hymn of The Republic"
With my Appreciation and Acknowledgment to:
Gettysburg National Park Web Site (Text and Photograph)
Please select any portion of the following underlined Chapters:
Civil War - Pennsylvania Regiments
The Blue Uniform My Family .. A Call to Arms "Dear Mother" ... 1862 Letter A Proper Burial
Roll of Honor ... Our Fallen Lads The Drummer Boy Medal of Honor - Sgt. Pursell
104th PA Regiment Battle of Fair Oaks 69th PA - Irish Brigade of Philadelphia
72nd PA - Sgt. George Leidy Hess
"Dear Mrs. Bixby" ... 1864 Letter - President Lincoln
From the Halls of Montezuma - U.S. Marine Corps
September 11, 2001 .. "Let's roll"
Appomattox .. "The Blue and Gray"
Philly in the 1940's .. A Trip down Memory Lane