Gettysburg II

The picture at the lower left is the Lincoln Memorial, one of two in the Gettysburg National Monument. This is of course, one of the pre-eminent battlegrounds of the Civil War and it is also significant that it was here, at the cemetery, that Lincoln gave his memorable Gettysburg Address:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers rought 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 greal civil war, testing wjether 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 gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow - this ground. The rave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, for above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, not long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they died here. It is for the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicating 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.

Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863.

I picked up a book on the Ghosts of Gettysburg, only one, as there were several volumes and around 2 pm on this warm and humid day, headed for our next destitation and another site of Americana - the Hatfield/McCoy feud site in Metawan, West Virginia on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky.