We can never forget

150 years ago today, it began.

The battle that defined the Civil War, ended up deciding it, and led to the speech for which it is remembered.

It is always worth reflecting on the sacrifice and the slaughter of this battle, this war, that preserved our freedom, and has helped keep the light of hope shining for so many outside our borders.

It is important to explain it to your children, and to your grandchildren, for them to see that you treat the memory with reverence and respect. No words can do that better than these…

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 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 other 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 notice, 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 inreased 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, November 20, 1863