A week from today 11/19 will be the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This is a nice op ed piece written by Ken Burns. I have been at the re-dedication of the Cemetary on several occasions and it is very moving to see hundreds of people in Civli War attire on the Battlefield visiting the monuments of the units that they re enact.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/12/opinion/burns-gettysburg-address/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Ah, I think you meant 150 years! Man, was it that long ago already? I will check it out.
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:
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 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 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.