Political Quotes

“it was 158 years ago tomorrow that Abraham Lincoln delivered what I believe was the greatest speech ever uttered by an American. He had been asked to say ``a few words'' at the dedication at the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA. Four months had passed since the great armies of the North and South had clashed on that hallowed ground. They had fought for 3 days in the searing July heat. When the slaughter finally ended, the battlefield lay covered with the bodies of 50,000 dead and wounded soldiers and officers. It was the bloodiest battle in the hellish Civil War. What good could come from butchery and sorrow? What great purpose had been worth such staggering loss? Those were the questions which Abraham Lincoln pondered on his train ride to answer in Gettysburg. He spoke for less than 3 minutes--just 272 words. In those 3 minutes, he redefined the war as not a battle for territory or property, but for human dignity and human equality. He gave us a profound, simple, new definition of democracy: ``Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' He said the fallen soldiers had done all they could do. They had given their ``last full measure of devotion'' to ensure democracy did not perish from this Earth. Now, Lincoln said, it was left to us, the living, to ``advance their unfinished work''--in his words, to salvage from all of that death a new birth of freedom.…”