19 November 2013
This recently discovered photograph of President Lincoln was captured moments after giving his dedicatory remarks that Thursday afternoon 150 years ago.
“Fourscore 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 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 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.”
President Abraham Lincoln
19 November 1863
Gettysburg battlefield, Pennsylvania
( Text via The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School )
Photograph from American Mensa on Facebook where a larger view of the image is available.
Regarding the photograph, Will the Real Abraham Lincoln Please Stand Up? A former Disney animator makes a provocative discovery by studying photos taken during the Gettysburg Address.
Also, Interactive: Seeking Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address. A series of photographs captured in November 1863 give us a sense of what happened when Lincoln delivered his famous speech.
Related: The Gettysburg Address–Annotated.
…Lincoln delivered the address in the middle of a war that was far from over. On the very day that Lincoln spoke, on November 19, 1863, Grays and Blues were engaged in the Siege of Knoxville, and, in just a few days, Gen. Grant would begin his successful campaign to drive the Confederates out of Chattanooga.
Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg for three specific reasons…
An excellent article at Breitbart’s Big Government.
