Abraham Lincoln's legendary 268-word, 10-sentence Gettysburg Address is best remembered for its 30-word opening sentence ("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."), and for its 82-word closing sentence ("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.") So famous is Lincoln's speech that it is etched verbatim at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and that Gary Willis dedicated to it an entire book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. Yet I am most surprised by this 21-word sentence, slightly more than midway through the speech:
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Of course, we have long remembered what Lincoln said on November 19, 1863 at the site of a Pennsylvania battlefield that has since become a National Cemetery. We also know that many of the 51,000 soldiers who died in that three-day bloodbath likely killed before they were killed. So what is so surprising about saying the world can never forget what the Union and Confederate dead did on that hallowed ground? An examination of this brother-against-brother four-year war in which an estimated million men gave their lives would open a window of understanding. Beholding the sheer humility of the sixteenth United States president two-and-a-half years into his term over only half a divided country he was elected to serve would also explain the sentence that precedes this surprising one: "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Indeed, the American spirit of the Civil War, in all its glory, shame, and courage, 31 months in duration at the time of the Gettysburg Address, is embedded in this two-minute speech.
