Do We Remember?

On November 19th, 1863 at the dedication for the cemetery for those who had died at Gettysburg Edward Everett was the orator of the day and his speech lasted over two hours. Then Lincoln rose, a sheet of paper in his hand and before the jaded crowd could come to full attention he had finished his speech.

At that three day battle at Gettysburg the two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties.

Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), while Confederate casualties are estimated at 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).Nearly a third of Lee’s general officers were killed, wounded, or captured or missing. The casualties for both sides during the entire campaign were 57,225.

The following is Abraham Lincoln’s 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 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 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.”