No Score, Just Four Years

When I started this blog (four years ago), I thought occasionally I might have loftier ideas to share here. Sure there have been lots of recipes and there have been noticeable gaps, but every once in a while something good comes along.

On this day, November 19, a tall man wearing a dark suit stood to make an address. He was not the primary speaker of the day, that honor belonged to a well-known orator, who spoke for more than two hours before yielding the podium. The great orator wrote to the tall man later, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

The great orator was Edward Everett. The tall man was Abraham Lincoln. The occasion was the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Lincoln's address was of course, the Gettysburg Address, delivered on this day "seven score and seven years ago" (that's 147 years ago to you and me) on November 19, 1863. Think you know all about the Gettysburg Address? Look here for some random facts (and this would be the opportunity for C in DC to tell her archives story, which she has done here before, if she likes).

Time Magazine rated the Gettysburg Address fourth in a recent list of the ten greatest speeches
The text of the speech appears below, followed by the list of the ten speeches. What do you think?

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.

1. Socrates, Apology, 4th C. BC - "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows."
2. Patrick Henry, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, 1775
3. Frederick Douglass, The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, 1852 - "Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."
4. Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 1863
5. Susan B. Anthony, Women's Rights to the Suffrage, 1873 - "It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people — women as well as men."
6. Winston Churchill, Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat, 1940 - "You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy."
7. John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961
8. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" Speech, 1963
9. Lyndon B. Johnson, The American Promise, 1965 - "There is no moral issue. It is wrong — deadly wrong — to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer."
10. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, 1987