Memorial Day is a holiday when Americans remember our war dead. Hopefully, we can set aside our differences long enough to take a moment to think about their sacrifice and be grateful. Their families, loved ones, and friends should be remembered, also. We are grateful for their sacrifice as well.
On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the following speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery:
Gettysburg Address
Fourscore 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot 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 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.[1]
Gettysburg was just one of many bloody Civil War battles;
brother against brother, father against son, friend against friend, and
Americans against each other.
Today, once again, Americans are divided against one another. Some have speculated that we are as divided as we were at the time of the Civil War. A lot has been written and said about who is to blame. I will not speculate about that here.
Reasonable people ask: Who in their right mind wants things to go that far? Does anyone want to see more of our people die?
Maybe we all should take a deep breath and try to resolve our differences. George Santayana is credited to have originated the famous quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."[2]
While we remember those who “gave the last full measure of devotion,” let us honor them by rededicating ourselves to being, “…one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” (emphasis added)
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