Gettysburg Address, Nov. 19: Will Our Republic Endure?

“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 here 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.”

Today is the 159th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address. The famous Battle of Gettysburg, the great Union victory that was “the bloodiest single battle” of the Civil War but also began turning the tide for an ultimate victory against the Confederacy and slavery, occurred on July 1-3, 1863. Months after that battle, President Abraham Lincoln came to Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for the war dead. Facing an exhausted, sorrowful crowd, Lincoln delivered ten sentences that made history.

We are not on a physical battlefield now, shooting guns at each other (pray God it stays that way), but we are at war—a war for the soul of this nation. Lincoln‘s Gettysburg Address is still a clarion call today, a call to all of us American patriots to stand up for the principles of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence; and, if we do that, no matter what, America will endure.