EV-TH12 FR HQ #96
Posted on 09/18/2012 7:53:01 PM PDT by carlo3b
The Gettysburg Address
"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. "
Is his speech, spoken during desperate times by an embattled leader to a weary nation, President Lincoln implored the gathered to remember what had happened on that hallowed ground and what was still at stake..
We are again living in historic times.. What our country does in the next 2 months, can be remembered as the turning point in this experiment we started in 1776, and tested several times during the course of our illustrious history..
If you do nothing else, VOTE, and get everyone in your family, and friends to cast their vote for our country to survive..
Lincoln was and continues to be a national disgrace. Slavery is wrong, but the federal government has no right to force ANY state into their point of view. Slavery would have died of natural causes, but Lincoln decided that 600,000 citizens needed to die instead. He was no Republican as I define it. He was a liberal then, now, and by any standard, and he perpetrated one of the great crimes against the federalist ideals of the founders.
the "house divided" speech is even more relevant.
I’m pretty sure the reason it’s rembered is that it’s easy for teachers to get kids to memorize. It is nonetheless great political oratory in that it stirs the soul while making no sense. (Government by the people was going to die? Huh? How? What about the earth’s other democracies? Seriously, what are you talking about?)
And trying to paint the Confederates as virtuous defenders of Federalism who recognized the rights of secession is pretty ironic, considering how for decades the southern states had used their greater strength in Congress and the Federal Government to push a pro-slavery agenda on the rest of the country (the fugitive slave laws, infringement of free-speech by abolitionists, weak enforcement of bans on the African slave trade, ect.). Not to mention, they didn't acknowledge the very principle of secession when it was applied to them - Virginia refused to recognize the legitimacy of West Virginia for instance.
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. "
Lincoln was a humble man, and this is an ironic line from his most famous speech.
...conceived in liberty...
That people then and now fail to see the hypocrisy is at the same time funny and sad.
If yankees believed in “liberty” as they and Lincoln so sanctimoniously claimed, and if the war had truly been fought for the purpose of freeing slaves, then once the north had won, they would have freed the slaves and subsequently freed the Confederate states. Given what actually happened, logic dictates that the war had nothing to do with freeing slaves.
Sort of the same justification they used to use regarding wife beating. “Who are we to interfere? Better he continues to beat his wife rather than us come between them.
Thanks for the ping.
It's important for us to remember... thanks carlo3b.
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