Gettysburg, Day 4

Due to schedules, and intermittent internet access,  I'm just now posting what I started almost a week ago.

Our final day here -- we went to see the largest battlefield diorama in the U.S.  It has thousands of hand painted miniature soldiers, horses, cannons, the buildings of Gettysburg, . . . and gives a panorama of the battleground and the activity during the three days of battle.  It pulled together everything we've seen and heard these last few days since we could see the whole battleground at once and "watch" the events unfold.

The last activity, fittingly (and coincidentally), was the ranger walk through the memorial cemetery. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was written for the cemetery dedication on Nov. 19, 1863. Gettysburg was still struggling to properly care for all the bodies, and they wouldn't all be interred till months after the dedication.

The cemetery is on the high ground of the battlefield -- ground the Union held throughout the battle, in spite of many attempts by the Confederates to overtake the area.

Here, in case you haven't read it in awhile, or maybe never did, is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. After walking around the battlefields, listening to the stories, and seeing some of the graves, it has a much deeper meaning than when I read it in school.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.