Chapter 2 MISSION RESOLUTION–PART 1

So now, go. I am sending you...

(Exodus 3:10)

The torrential rain was followed by the summer’s burning heat. Bodies lay half-buried around the hamlet of Gettysburg. The Union army had defeated the Confederates in the three day battle. The victory, however, had come at an enormous cost. Twenty-three thousand Union soldiers were dead, wounded or missing. Something had to be done to honor the fallen. For this solemn purpose, seventeen acres of land at the battle site was purchased to serve as a cemetery. November 19, 1863 was the chosen to be the occasion of the service of dedication. The Reverend Edward Everett, a great orator, was to give the much anticipated main address. A speaker’s platform had been erected. A crowd of fifteen to twenty-two thousand had gathered.

Abraham Lincoln was not the main speaker. The President had been invited to attend only at the last moment. Upon acceptance he indicated that he would like to say a few words. He hurriedly travelled to Gettysburg by train arriving on the eve of the ceremony.

At 10 o’clock the next morning, Lincoln joined the procession to the cemetery just outside the township. Reverent Everett spoke for two hours about the war and the purpose for fighting it. His speech was well received. The President then rose to his feet and gave an address that lasted less than two minutes. There are a number of minor variations of Lincoln’s speech captured by reporters present at the dedication. The following is the version authorized by the President himself:

“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 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