Lincoln gives address at Gettysburg, no TV, but transcript here:

[pinto]

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/25.htm

INTRODUCTION TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Few documents in the growth of American democracy are as well known or as beloved as the prose poem Abraham Lincoln delivered at the dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

In June 1863 Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee moved north in an effort to win a dramatic victory that would reverse the South's declining fortunes. On July 1-3, Lee's forces fought the Union army under the command of George C. Meade, and before the fighting ended, the two sides suffered more than 45,000 casualties. Lee, having lost more than a third of his men, retreated, and the Battle of Gettysburg is considered a turning point in the American Civil War.

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (1863)

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 the 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.

Source: Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7 (1953-1955), 22.


http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/25.htm

[NNadir]

1. Why didn't he explain about the Confederate axis of evil?

[KamaAina]

2. I heard he's retroactively changing his registration to Independent

the present-day repukes' "Party of Lincoln" tripe is causing him to seriously consider haunting somebody...

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. Lincoln stood in the way of the powerful rightwing of the Whig Party....

...and what they saw as the enormous post-Civil War profits that could be made in an occupied South.

Flash forward to current events....same s**t, different day. The only difference is the fact that the ENTIRE country is occupied and being scraped clean of every last morsel of profit.

[pinto]

4. an interesting echo to this address: from MLK

<snip>

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition."


http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/Ihaveadream.htm

[unhappycamper]

5. 272 words

IMHO, this speech ranks among the best 19th century speeches ever made. Go to the Soldiers' National Cemetery and read this speech - the power of those words will hit you like a brick bat.

http://www.nps.gov/gett/home.htm