Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address lasted only two minutes, and yet it has been called the "most enduring speech in American history." Memorial Day (first named Decoration Day), was established just after the Civil War to remember the war dead. The Gettysburg Address is often repeated even today at Memorial Day ceremonies all over the United States of America.
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 prop0osition 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 peo0ple, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Bill Witcher is co-founder of Computer School for Seniors (http://www.cs4seniors.com/)
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