On Memorial Day weekend in 1965, I was asked by Village President Phillip Reno to to deliver The Gettysburg Address at a small ceremony in our town’s cemetery following a parade, including some military veterans from the last three wars that American military personnel fought and died in.
We didn’t have any Viet Nam veterans yet, they were still fighting.
I memorized Lincoln’s dedication speech, and was honored to be chosen to present it at the cemetery. I’m posting the complete text of it, and please take a moment to read it. It hasn’t lost any of its ability to move one, and to dwell on the cost of war.
What do you get when Americans fight other Americans? Dead Americans. United we stand, and divided we fall. Please take special notice of the last words, they are still valid as much today as they were 157 years ago.
“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.”
— Abraham Lincoln
As a veteran, I thank you for these special words on this special day.