Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

[Eric Frost]

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 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.

word count: 270
wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

[Eric Frost]

Today from the Wall Street Journal --

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154076720569453.html

"The two-minute speech that Lincoln read at Gettysburg, dedicating the battlefield as a cemetery, is a miracle of verbal compression, so tightly packed with layers of implication that even now historians and critics are still uncovering fresh subtleties in its scant 270 words of text. The Gettysburg Address redefined the purpose and meaning of the nation with such richness and precision, and with such breathtaking economy, that it has become a classic of American literature, at least as great a piece of writing as "Moby-Dick" or the very best poems in "Leaves of Grass."

[jonfrost]

Cool, thanks.
I was reading some of the stories about Abe Lincoln last year and he persevered with excellence through some long struggles. He wrote so many letters to so many people in the last years of his life. Though he was really worn thin he kept a solid sense of humor and maintained his perspective beautifully. A great man who wove a thread that we can keep learning from through his writing and preserved speaches. chow.

[Anonymous Guy]

Well, Lincoln may have been a great man, and he obviously wrote a lot of letters....but did he ever ONCE even submitt a reply in a thread???