Thanks, and best wishes to you this day.
The Fourth is special this year, because we're also recognizing the 150th anniversary of the battle at Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln's address at the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg spoke to the values and principles of American independence. He said,
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 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.
Coach
Can someone please explain briefly to an immigrant like me why Gettysburg is so important culturally here? Is it the end of your civil war, the end of slavery, or just the unification of the south and north ? What makes Gettysburg so special in the US psyche?
Most casualties of any civil war battle and turning point in the war
I'm no historian, but Gettysburg may have been the most important battle of the Civil War. It was a turning point in a war that had been going badly for the Union. It was also the deadliest battle of the war, with something on the order of 50,000 casualties on both sides.Can someone please explain briefly to an immigrant like me why Gettysburg is so important culturally here? Is it the end of your civil war, the end of slavery, or just the unification of the south and north ? What makes Gettysburg so special in the US psyche?
Also the site of one of the most eloquent speeches ever .
Some people may not know that most of the Confederate soldiers within the siege lines who surrendered at Vicksburg were paroled. Theoretically, they were supposed to go home and study war no more, but most of them returned to the Confederate Army and served in later campaigns in the lower South, like Atlanta.This is also the day that Gen. Grant forced the surrender of the city of Vicksburg. He delayed formal surrender for a day so that it would fall on Independence day. As a result Independence day was not celebrated in the city until the 1950's when President Eisenhower came to town, then not regularly until the 1990's.
It is interesting since the people of Vicksburg did not vote for secession but conformed to the way the state voted. I guess the hardship of having to eat your domesticated animals to survive and the aftermath of the surrender created this.