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[krag96]

...began the message President Abraham Lincoln would deliver at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863.  The speech was less than two minutes long, yet more was said that volumes written by others.  My generation of school children had to memorize it in the fourth grade.

 

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.

 

 

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

 

 

Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg holds most of the Union dead from the battle.  Others were taken home and buried by relatives, some mortally wounded were buried near where they died, some are still buried in shallow graves on the battlefield where they fell.  A portion of Cemetery Hill was donated alongside Evergreen Cemetery for the burials

 

Inside the gate, a map and view of the cemetery

 

 

Inside

 

 

Evergreen Cemetery behind the guns.  On July 1 men lay the grave markers over so artillery could operate and shoot from there, despite a sign that strictly forbade shooting in the cemetery.

 

 

Here the known dead are buried, their names inscribed in the stone semi circles by state.

 

 

The small stone markers denote an grave of the unknown dead

 

 

The center piece of the cemetery, Soldiers National Monument, Liberty adorns the pedestal

 

 

The statues at the base represent, War, History, Plenty, and Peace

 

 

Mrs. Elizabeth Thorn, six months pregnant and the wife of a soldier lived in the gate house of Evergreen Cemetery.  When the war came to her doorstep she was ordered to leave.  When she came back she tended the wounded, buried the dead, drew water and made bread for the living.

 

 

The gatehouse after the battle