Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and his letter to Mrs. Bixby

Once in a while a blogger has the right to digress.

I see a lot of mention of Abraham Lincoln's sublime Gettysburg Address in the news and on Facebook today (Nov. 19th) on the 150th anniversary of his speech. It has to be one of the greatest public speeches of all time and certainly is a landmark in our on American History. I myself get so much out of reading his speech and have read it many times. I am reprinting it here today so that you can read it. Bear in mind that there is no exact historical version of the text and there are only drafts and post speech written copies that all vary a bit. The following version is from the Hay copy which is owned by the Library of Congress.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, 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 can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It is a moving document to read. In addition I think it is a good idea to post Mr. Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby that he wrote to her after being informed by the war department that she had lost all five of  her sons on the field of battle while fighting for the Union cause. Perhaps I am a bit jaded but if I heard this sort of language today from a politician I would not give it much credit. But when Lincoln wrote of the "alter of freedom" I feel like he really meant and believed in what he was saying.

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 21, 1864.

Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts:
  DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln