07/04/2003 Entry: "Dear Mr. President"
Posted by Maynard @ 04:37 PM MST

Dear Mr. President

I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

Edward Everett

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 their nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we 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 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 here 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, November 19th, 1863

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