Gettysburg Revisited

by Jenny Powell MD

Despite the legend that Abraham Lincoln procrastinated and scribbled his most famous speech while on the train headed to the Gettysburg battlefield, the original copies are in his careful script. Lincoln thoroughly thought out his speeches and would not have rattled this particular one off the cuff, as is suggested. He knew how important this speech was. And though he stated that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,” he had a strong sense that whatever he uttered would be measured against the losses of that battleground and the entire war.

Abraham Lincoln was a flawed man. He would be the first to remind us of that. The sixteenth President of the United States was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and matured into manhood in central Illinois. He suffered from major depression and married a woman with bipolar disorder. But he was intelligent, thoughtful, personable, resourceful, and even-tempered. Abraham Lincoln was a self-reliant, self-taught, and self-made man.

Why write a blog for ACFW about Lincoln? Because he was a great writer. And because February 12 is his birthday. And because I’m Illinois-born and raised, and lived in Lincoln’s stomping grounds for many years. Lincoln considered the capital city of Springfield, Illinois, his hometown, where you can visit multiple Lincoln sites today. Start with the New Salem Historic Site near Petersburg, the reconstructed village where Lincoln spent his young adulthood. Then head to the Lincoln Home and the Presidential Library Museum, ending your tour in Oak Ridge Cemetery, all in Springfield.

Back to the Gettysburg Address. This work is proof positive that sometimes good things come in small packages. Containing a mere 272 words, it refocused the true, underlying purpose of America’s civil war: human equality. As important as property rights are to a free people, the concept of human equality in and of itself precludes the notion that a human can be considered the property of another. But most impressive is that Lincoln, unlike nearly every other president, did not have a speechwriter. Every piece of writing attributed to the man was conceived and written by him. He believed the written word was an art that elevated humankind. Reading this speech, it’s hard to argue.

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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, 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 can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

~Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Jenny Powell MD is a family physician, thanks to a call from the Holy Spirit, with a unique practice style and two busy offices, available to her patients 24/7. When not writing prescriptions, she works on her unpublished manuscripts, reads a lot of novels, and supports ACFW writers. Visit Jenny on her website and Instagram @jpowellmdauthor.