Tag: Abraham Lincoln

The Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg was originally planned for October 23rd, 1863, but delayed four weeks so that the featured speaker could properly prepare.  On the afternoon of November 19th, 1863, with a crowd of about 15,000 (and perhaps as large as 50,000, by one estimate) in attendance at Evergreen Cemetery, including several dignitaries, the keynote address was delivered:

Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature.  But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; -- grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy. ...

Not the speech you remember?  Yeah, thought so.

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

It occurs to me, though, that a key reason for the discoherent response from social conservatives in this debate is because we are allowing the pro-homosexual advocates (even within our own party) to define the terms of the debate.  In doing so, we're allowing them to preemptively neuter every argument we're advancing, because we're allowing their premises to stand unchallenged.  I think that, if we're going to have a reasoned philosophical discussion of this matter, then a constitutional premise is a more useful way to handle this.