THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

If someone asked where the most horrific battles in world history were fought, few would mention a little town called Gettysburg, PA, during the United States civil war. Yet over 7,000 soldiers were buried at the cemetery after the three day battle.

A few weeks later, President Lincoln was invited to "make a few appropriate remarks", at the Soldier's Cemetery in Gettysburg Pennsylvania.

But, President Lincoln was not asked to be the featured speaker. Another 'rhetorician' was invited to deliver a keynote speech. He asked for more time to prepare, and had the ceremony postponed. His speech lasted over two hours.

Yet, it is President Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" that remains one of the most remembered in history.

President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address exemplifies the art and craft of writing at its finest, and shows how art memorializes an important event into a holiday such as Memorial Day.

The art and craft of writing is exemplified by the Gettysburg Address

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Note the deep artistic dimensions in this incredible sculpture. Lincoln is seated between two immovable 'walls'. His face, set in strong determination, shows the horror and terror of what he sees. His coat tails show the chaos of events unfolding around him. In the balance is the future of the world's first freedom -- We the People of the United States -- his clenched hands show the stress.

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November 19, 1863

"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

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Celebrating The Holidays:
Art Celebrates The Holidays

History of Art:
Photography
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Crafts:
Photography Zones
Gettysburg Address

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Arbor Day
Memorial Day
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Independence Day
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Halloween
Christmas Holiday

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS