July 3 Plus 1
From July 1 - July 3, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg raged. Casualties were appalling on both sides, with over 7,000 dead at the end of it. It seems appropriate on this Independence Day, as we celebrate our freedom, to recall the the price that was paid then, and continues to be paid today, so that we may continue to enjoy the blessings of liberty in this country
Perhaps the best way to remember the battle is to repeat the words of President Lincoln who commemorated it some months later with words that should be familiar to us all:
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.
Enjoy your independence.
CapeCodAlan
