Robert Edsel's Blog

Perhaps no greater speech has ever been delivered on a somber put critically important occasion as President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. This speech, numbering no more than 269 words, perfectly captured the moment and brought honor to the fallen soldiers of the North and South and the respective ideals which they were fighting to preserve.

One of the great experiences of visiting Washington, D.C. is to stop by the Lincoln Memorial and re-read these words etched in stone on the north wall near the magnificent sculpture of the President… which now oversees the World War II Memorial.

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.

I never get tired of seeing the White House. I jog around it as I head south towards the Washington Monument, then west around the World War ll Memorial until I reach the Lincoln Memorial and head back.

This past weekend brought unseasonable springlike weather to Washington which made the appearance of the marigolds seem out of place. But the pigeons sitting atop Andrew Jackson’s head didn’t mind in the least…nor did those of us who meandered around outdoors, relishing our last few days of glorious weather.