| 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. About
Lincoln:
As
President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national
organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the
Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation
that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln
never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue.
This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at
Gettysburg: "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."
Lincoln
won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the
war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous,
encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.
The
spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now
inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With
malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation's wounds.... "
On Good
Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in
Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was
helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death,
the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.
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