Gettysburg Address (1 Viewer)

[jazzeum]

Today is the 145th anniversary of President Lincoln's giving of the Gettysburg Address, a speech that as Garry Wills has called it in his book on the Address, "the words that remade America."

Here is the text of the Address:

Fourscore 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 honoured 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 freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

 

[Combat]

Ken Burns to speak at Dedication Day

Ken Burns, an Emmy award winning documentary film producer, will be the keynote speaker marking the 145th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on Wednesday.

The Dedication Day ceremony is free to the public and is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

“The rebirth of our nation, and its ideals and principles, took place at Gettysburg in November of 1863,” Burns said. “Today, as we find ourselves reborn again in the thrill of recent political events, it is altogether fitting and proper that we gather again in this beautiful town, on this hallowed ground, to re-remind us of our perpetually evolving creed.”

In 1991, Burns was honored with the Lincoln Prize for his film series “The Civil War.” The nine-episode, 11-hour documentary examines the war through personal stories and archived photographs. It has been honored with more than 40 television and film awards.

Burns’ connection to Gettysburg goes beyond the series however, as he had a role in the 1993 film “Gettysburg,” and returned to town several times since then to visit and speak.

As part of the ceremony, the U.S. Mint and the National Commission will unveil a commemorative coin of Abraham Lincoln, available to the public on Feb. 12, 2009 — the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Also, Gov. Ed Rendell has allocated $500,000, to be presented Wednesday, to the Commission to support Dedication Day events for 2008 and 2009, and for WITF (Gettysburg’s local public television network) to create a Lincoln documentary for the Bicentennial.

The Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania, Gettysburg National Military Park and the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College are sponsoring the Dedication Day ceremony, which will be preceded by a 10:15 a.m. wreath laying ceremony at the Soldiers’ National Monument.

On Thursday night, the first in a series of 10 town hall meetings commemorating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth will be held in the Gettysburg College Union

Ballroom from 7 to 9 p.m. The topic of the meeting is “Lincoln’s Legacy: Race, Freedom and Equality of Opportunity.”

The panelists include Jesse L. Jackson Jr., United States House of Representatives, Illinois; Jack Kemp, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Susan Eisenhower, President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc. and Distinguished Fellow of the Eisenhower Institute; Allen Guelzo, Director of Civil War Era Studies & Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era, Gettysburg College; and Norman Bristol Colón, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs.

According to a press release on the meeting, one question addressed will be “How do the conditions of an ever diversifying country reflect what Lincoln termed the “unfinished work” of America? As president, he worked to expand our constitutional rights. Today, we must ask if we would expand those rights even further to better provide full and free economic opportunity, universal health care and access to a good education for every child.”

A Remembrance Day parade and other activities, sponsored by the Sons of Union Veterans, will kick off Nov. 22 at 1 p.m.