On Abe Lincoln

As you've seen elsewhere on the website, sometimes I include stuff simply because I feel like it. What follows is one of the greatest speeches in the history of humanity by one of the two greatest Presidents in the history of our great nation. Lincoln was beset by more problems than any other President - lost a son while President, lost three brother-in-laws who were fighting for the opposition, a wife with her own problems, bitter criticism from all sides, etc., etc., etc.

I recently spent a day at the Lincoln museum in Springfield, Illinois --- something I would heartily recommend for all. I believe there's a biblical text to the effect that 'humility comes before honor'. It certainly was the case for Mr. Lincoln. Enjoy:

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.