He Thought His Words Would Not be Remembered

On a Friday long ago, a significant event happened on the fields of Pennsylvania that passed by largely unobserved.  It was a short commemorative address delivered November 19, 1863, and it lasted only a few minutes. 

The man who spoke outdoors that day on the battlefields at Gettysburg didn’t think that anyone would ever remember what he said. He wasn’t even the main speaker and he uttered only 271 words.

His handwritten notes were part of a ceremony to dedicate the bloody earth upon which thousands of American youth from the North and the South fell in what would prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.

Below are a few words culled from those of Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who delivered the Gettysburg Address 87 years after the American Revolution of 1776.  It began with:

“Four score and seven years ago…

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 [America] 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.”

On that day in November 1863, Lincoln was convinced that his nation had been waging the right struggle to hold together the nascent American Republic, despite the enormous loss of life. 

Today, in 2010, can we be as confident that it is worth the price of American blood to support the political and military systems of corrupt regimes in regions half-way around the world whose leaders and citizens don’t give a fig about the American system of values?