The Address at Gettysburg
.. was stonecarved
by gore
... horses so brutally
gored.. McClellan
could not harm them..
to win the war...
.. the lifeblood
of disemboweled teenagers..
.. legs cut off without
anesthesia..
.. blinded eyes..
widows.. fatherless children
... burned orchards..
eaten dogs.. pets commandeered
and butchered..
the people pooer and poorer
.. war profiteers richer and
richer
and more..
and more
and more
.
Author's Notes/Comments:
to Gore Vidal ..who said
the Gettysburg Address
was written in blood..
whose courage to work
for peace inspires and
whose writing power
in its economy
chills in
resurrecting history
Nov 19, 1863 by A Lincoln:
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:
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
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 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.
