Gettysburg Address - November 19, 1863

One of my favorite DC things to do was take a good power walk around the Mall. Around halfway I'd charge up the Lincoln Memorial stairs, elbow some tourists out of the way, and detour left to the text of the Gettysburg Address. I'd lean against the second column from the front, pause my ipod, and mouth the words start to finish. The richness and relevancy of these words give me chills.

Some texts can't come alive until you say them aloud; until you feel the rhythm of delivery...

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 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.