our treasured documents

i have been inspired by many kind comments to make available some of our more treasured and relevent documents. the first one i am going to start with is the gettysburg address- for a variety of reasons. lincoln is being touted as possibly the best president in history- and in some right leaning circles it is being discussed to revamp his personal history to make him look better. i say, that the man doesn't need to be revamped because the words that he wrote allows him to stand as he is- humble beginnings, self taught, self made, eloquent- he doesn't need help. that being said- he was a human being with his own faults and shortcomings as well as his achievements. it makes him no less capable. he is unparalleled as a leader and his words that inspired the union to fight on are timeless. so- from the mouth of a patriot who fought to unite the nation rather than divide it- here is the very timely gettysburg address:

Transcript of Gettysburg Address (1863)

Executive Mansion,

Washington, , 186 .

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. 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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedica-ted 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 these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

Abraham Lincoln, Draft of the Gettysburg Address: Nicolay Copy. Transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Available at Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, D.C.: American Memory Project, [2000-02]), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html.

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