A Common Noble Cause: Reflections on the Gettysburg Address, 149 years later
Written: November 19, 2012 (a portion of this was published in York Daily Record on May 29, 2013)
Seven score and nine years ago on this very day, our nation’s sixteenth president delivered the address that will forever resonate throughout the battlefield on which it was spoken, as well as in classrooms and in the hearts and minds of people the nation—and in fact, the world—over.
A master of the English language, an orator as good as any, and a doer of astronomically great deeds, I should only hope and pray to walk in the footsteps of that man. On a ridge overlooking the hallowed ground littered just four months prior with the dead and dying, that man spoke to a purpose of a people, and to the purpose of all people, in a short 272-word piece of writing that we now know as the timeless Gettysburg Address.
This morning I attended a Dedication Day ceremony in Gettysburg, which commemorated this grand event. I cannot anticipate that all who are reading this would be able to attend such an event on a Monday morning, of course. I am not one to demand much out of people, but I do ask one thing right now, and that is this: Take just two minutes from your day—on this day—to read and truly feel the words of his address come to life. Think about what it means to you, and what it means to all people of all nations.
It is these occasions that we must remember most humbly, not for what we do on them, but for what was done on, by, and because of them. There are many momentous sites across our vast land. Much has been done in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, but it is in the towns and on the fields of otherwise nameless unknown places that our national identity was—and I hope, still is—forged. These places are the Sharsburgs, Vicksburgs, Petersburgs, and of course, the Gettysburgs, of our nation.
We are Americans because of documents, yes; because of words, yes; because of great deeds, yes; but ultimately, these were all made possible because of the shedding of blood by honorable, selfless individuals who have come together for a common noble cause.
Please read the address today; please know what it means; please remember the dead; and please remember the man who spoke the words that are honored on this day. He is the greatest of my personal historical heroes, a man who gave his life for the cause of justice and liberty. Please remember on this day the words, and more importantly the actions, of Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
A master of the English language, an orator as good as any, and a doer of astronomically great deeds, I should only hope and pray to walk in the footsteps of that man. On a ridge overlooking the hallowed ground littered just four months prior with the dead and dying, that man spoke to a purpose of a people, and to the purpose of all people, in a short 272-word piece of writing that we now know as the timeless Gettysburg Address.
This morning I attended a Dedication Day ceremony in Gettysburg, which commemorated this grand event. I cannot anticipate that all who are reading this would be able to attend such an event on a Monday morning, of course. I am not one to demand much out of people, but I do ask one thing right now, and that is this: Take just two minutes from your day—on this day—to read and truly feel the words of his address come to life. Think about what it means to you, and what it means to all people of all nations.
It is these occasions that we must remember most humbly, not for what we do on them, but for what was done on, by, and because of them. There are many momentous sites across our vast land. Much has been done in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, but it is in the towns and on the fields of otherwise nameless unknown places that our national identity was—and I hope, still is—forged. These places are the Sharsburgs, Vicksburgs, Petersburgs, and of course, the Gettysburgs, of our nation.
We are Americans because of documents, yes; because of words, yes; because of great deeds, yes; but ultimately, these were all made possible because of the shedding of blood by honorable, selfless individuals who have come together for a common noble cause.
Please read the address today; please know what it means; please remember the dead; and please remember the man who spoke the words that are honored on this day. He is the greatest of my personal historical heroes, a man who gave his life for the cause of justice and liberty. Please remember on this day the words, and more importantly the actions, of Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
Photo: Codie Eash, taken Nov. 19, 2012
