Letter to the Editor

Reprint Lincoln speech?

Friday, February 17, 2012

Dear Editor,

Coming up on Monday, Feb. 20, Americans will celebrate Presidents' Day. As most readers will recall, some years ago we took the time to honor Abraham Lincoln on his birthday (Feb. 12) and George Washington on his birthday (Feb. 22).

It almost seems that we are losing perspective on the original purpose of honoring two of our greatest presidents.

Presidents' Day is on a Monday so many folks can have a three-day weekend and some say the occasion is to honor all former U.S. presidents.

Perhaps the McCook Gazette could print Abraham Lincoln's greatest speech, The Gettysburg Address, that he gave on Nov. 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, after another big battle during the Civil War.

I can remember a history class when I was in high school that spent a lot of time studying the speech.

Maybe we could also do a short story about George Washington and his role during the Revolutionary War.

It would be great if newspapers gave us these reminders on publication dates near the dates of President Lincolns' and President Washingtons' actual birthdates.

Thank you,

Duane Tappe,

McCook, Nebraska

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Authorities say there are actually five or more versions of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which took two minutes to deliver. After which, he called it "A flat failure." According to popular accounts, these are the words he spoke:

"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 cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot 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.

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