Monday, August 1, 2011

150 years ago

It was hot, too hot to work outside , so I parked myself in front of the TV and watched the History Channel's, beautifully made "Gettysburg", I sobbed. And for nights after I could feel the suppressive heat, smell the soldiers in heavy woolen uniforms, the gunpowder, fresh blood and fresh death, wince a the piercing screams, and the roar of artillery fire. the smell of tall grasses and trees fractured by rifle and cannon shot.



"An estimate of the deaths in the Civil War is 623,026. This means that of men of service age, one out of eleven men died during the Civil War years between 1861 and 1865." ~Jonathan R. Allen



And the toll on those left behind cannot be underestimated.



My 5th grade teacher was an amazing woman, and a gifted story teller. She used this to make the Civil War come to life for us, very lucky kids we were. She told a story of how Lincoln, wrote the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope, while riding on the train to be a speaker at the dedication of the battlefield monument. Edward Everet was the featured speaker and he spoke for about 2 hours, that November day.

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.~y U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the best-known speeches in United States history.[1] It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg
Edward Everet spoke for approximately 2hours.

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