Do You Know The Getttysburg Address?

Yesterday, I posted one of my favorite quotes on JoanReevesWrites, my Facebook Page.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.” ~Leo Rosten

I was thinking about that after reading an article about the decline in cultural history—you know, all of the written works, art, culture, history, etc.  upon which our entire society is built.

I wondered how many knew what the Gettysburg Address was and/or how many could recite it.

When I went to school we were required to memorize epic poems as well as the text of documents important to our United States of America like the Preamble to the Consitituion. I can still recite all of those.

Is this still required in public schools where handwriting is no longer taught, English grammar is a tiny aspect of the subject matter, math curriculum is now so confusing I can’t do it the “required” way, and history glosses over the uglier aspects of the past, ignoring the edict that if you don’t learn the hard lessons history has taught then you are doomed to repeat them?

The Gettysburg Address

I’m still touched by the words Lincoln spoke on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

The presidential speech was only 272 words long, and it was delivered on November 19, 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 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.

Takeaway Truth

To quote something else Leo Rosten is famous for having said: “Words hurt. They teach. They sancitfy. They were man’s first immeasurable feat of magic.” Words are important—especially those upon which our entire cultural history is built.

Note About the Photograph

This Public Domain photograph is one of the two confirmed photos of Lincoln. (Look for the tall hat on the man in the center, facing camera. It was taken about noon, just after he arrived at Gettysburg, and about 3 hours before his speech. To his right is his bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon.

Photographer attributions vary from unidentified to Mathew Brady.This Public Domain image still requires a © tag. The image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ds.03106.