On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In fewer than 275 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought some four months earlier, was one of the single bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Over the course of three days, more than 45,000 men were killed, injured, captured or went missing. The battle also proved to be the turning point of the war: General Robert E. Lee’s defeat and retreat from Gettysburg marked the last Confederate invasion of Northern territory and the beginning of the Southern army’s ultimate decline.
Charged by Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, to care for the Gettysburg dead, an attorney named David Wills bought 17 acres of pasture to turn into a cemetery for the more than 7,500 who fell in battle. Wills invited Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators of the day, to deliver a speech at the cemetery’s dedication. Almost as an afterthought, Wills also sent a letter to Lincoln—just two weeks before the ceremony—requesting “a few appropriate remarks” to consecrate the grounds.
At the dedication, the crowd listened for two hours to Everett before Lincoln spoke. Lincoln’s address lasted just two or three minutes. The speech reflected his redefined belief that the Civil War was not just a fight to save the Union, but a struggle for freedom and equality for all, an idea Lincoln had not championed in the years leading up to the war. This was his stirring conclusion: “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.”
Reception of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was initially mixed, divided strictly along partisan lines. Nevertheless, the “little speech,” as he later called it, is thought by many today to be the most eloquent articulation of the democratic vision ever written.
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Love him or hate him, that’s one of the greatest speeches in American history. It’s a 2 minute speech.
Who else spoke that day? NO ONE knows without looking it up. It was Edward Everett. He was one of the most famous orators of his time. He spoke for over two hours. And no one remembers one damned thing he said.
“Too many of us are dismayed at the brevity of life. We ought to focus more on the length of eternity” — Herr Stuchenplato
That is very true Stucky for when you lose the meat suit, your soul will go back to from whence it came to answer for Earthly deeds.
Hear! Hear !
Life is short. Dead is forever.
The murderous Tyrant’s propaganda is meaningless drivel…
Over 700,000 of America’s finest Patriots, cravenly murdered by his dictatorship, speak more eloquently than all the fawning and blathering about this traitorous Bastard.
Best song tribute to Lincoln evah !
laughing!
Note on the Gettysburg Address
By H.L. Mencken
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
F’n Yankees.
In other words; pure bullshit.
Another case of projection
Mission accomplished.
Slavery codified.
Tyranny ensconced.
Lincoln was the opposite of the America in the Declaration.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/?s=dilorenzo+lincoln
Another source for DiLorenzo’s book:
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Store.aspx#!/The-Real-Lincoln-Book-By-Professor-Thomas-DiLorenzo/p/71957497/category=0
I’ve met Mr. DiLorenzo, and heard him speak at Liberty Fellowship in Kalispell, MT.
The DVD of that speech is available at:
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Store.aspx#!/The-Problem-With-Lincoln-Is-The-Problem-With-America-DVD-By-Thomas-DiLorenzo-LIBERTY-FELLOWSHIP-10TH-ANNIVERSARY-SPEECH/p/289899118/category=0
abraham lincoln: greatest mass murderer in the history of the then, as now, UNunited states.
Fauci’s nipping at his heels.
A. Lincoln, tyrant and hypocrite.
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”
-Abraham Lincoln, in an 1848 speech before the US Congress
“[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
— H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956)
Hon. Horace Greeley: Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours, A. Lincoln.