Lincoln’s speech remains powerful

Published 9:47 pm Tuesday, February 11, 2014

1. As death of Lincoln marked, caretakers of tomb face setbacks

Abraham Lincoln has been getting quite a bit

of attention lately. There’s the Oscar-nominated

film, of course, but also President

Barack Obama has been doing his level best

to evoke Lincoln.

As columnist Mona Charen pointed out recently,

“[Obama] swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln’s

Bible. He has asked to give the State of the

Union address on Lincoln’s birthday. He rode to

Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln’s

in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln’s

critics.”

But that’s not really fair to Lincoln, who stands

above the fray of today’s petty politics.

And, as today is the 205th anniversary of the birth

of Lincoln, it seems appropriate to take a fresh look

at the founder of the modern Republican Party’s

most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address.

It’s powerful — short, to the point, and moving in

its words and imagery.

Many of us learned it in school. But too often, it

was learned too early, perhaps, to have the lasting

effect it should have on us. Learned too early, and

forgotten too soon.

In fact, it’s not really a speech the very young can

truly comprehend, with its focus on war, on the

fallen soldiers, and the ideas for which they died.

Children can recite it, but they cannot yet understand

its full impact.

So let’s review it again. Here’s Lincoln’s final draft

of the speech:

“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.”