Week 8 countdown - the Gettysburg Address

 

This week we will review and memorize Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  Here is the text of the Gettysburg Address from this website:  https://www.owleyes.org/text/gettysburg-address/read/text-of-lincolns-speech#root-8

Delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 19, 1863

by Abraham Lincoln

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 battle-field 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.

As a reminder, this battle at Gettysburg was the death of the Southern cause.  Pickett's Charge, for example, destroyed Major General Pickett's division.   When Lincoln said that they were on a great battlefield, he was not exaggerating.

I bring to your attention the statement that our nation was "conceived in Liberty."  That can be interpreted a number of ways, and this is something we should consider. Was the Declaration of Independence the act of conception?  Or was the Declaration of Independence based on the sense of liberties due to the English Bill of Rights of 1689?  The English Bill of Rights came from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and included the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, the right to bail, freedom from cruel punishments, and more.  Our expectations of liberty and freedom go back to the English Bill of Rights of 1689.  We declared our independence because we were already carrying in our hearts the sense of our rights going back 87 years, from 1776 to 1689.

Our sense of liberty also comes from God's blessings.  Remember that the Liberty Bell contains this inscription.  Leviticus 25:10 "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

You saw in the film The American Miracle where Richard Dreyfuss, the actor, said that if we don't love our country we will lose our country.  He was worried about the end of America.  People are worried about America dissolving.  Decades ago a Russian social scientist predicted that America would break up and become a collection of smaller countries, TEXIT on a larger scale.  Lincoln hoped that our government "shall not perish from the earth."  George Washington in his Farewell Address emphasized repeatedly the importance of maintaining the union and the Constitution.

The purpose of our 52 week study is to rekindle our love of America and our understanding of its greatness. If enough of us revive the love of America, then we shall have a new birth of freedom as Lincoln encouraged.  I  point out that Lincoln refers to us as "this nation under God."  If we treasure the blessings of liberty given to us by God in the creation of this nation, and we pray to God, we will with God's help triumph over those who wish to destroy America.

I have laid out the Gettysburg Address so it fits into four text boxes that can be mounted on index cards to carry in your pocket for memorization.  I am attaching it here for your convenience as an image.  I can email a PDF version (Gettysburg address.pdf) or a Word version to you if you ask me for it. It prints as one page.

Thank you for continuing in our joint study.  I am working on memorizing the speech.  I will admit that I might only succeed in memorizing parts of it, but it's the effort that matters, and the sense of importance owing to our desire to memorize it.

Thank you for your steadfastness in continuing the study with me.  We are behind in our overall schedule.  I plan to catch up.

Robert