To the point

150 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches ever given by a president. The speech was short - it lasted all of two minutes. But in those two minutes, President Lincoln summed up the sacrifices made by those who died on the battlefield in July 1863.

According to Wikipedia, this is one of only two
photographs of Lincoln at Gettysburg on 11/19/1863.

If you haven't read the Gettysburg Address since you were in high school, take a moment of two to read it and think about what Lincoln was saying. Reflect upon the timelessness of the message.

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, "Gettysburg Address" (Nov. 19, 1863)

Maybe the speech is so powerful because of the economy of words. Sometimes, you see, less can be more. Great oration doesn't mean long oration. We can all take a lesson from Lincoln, sometimes when we strip a speech (or writing) to its very essence, we enhance not only its meaning but its effectiveness.

While he pays homage to those who died, Lincoln also challenges the rest of us - those who lived during the Civil War, and those generations that came later - to ensure that our representative democracy survived. At the time Lincoln gave his speech there were still millions held in slavery. At the time of the speech, neither free blacks nor women had the right to vote.

Since that time the word people has taken on new meanings - and it will continue to take on new meanings into the future. The road has not always been easy and the course has not always been straight, but as we expand the meaning of the word people we get closer to that government of, by and for the people that Lincoln spoke so reverently of.

The turning of the tide 150 years ago

150 years ago today dawn broke over the fields and foothills of Central Pennsylvania where the armies of George Meade and Robert E. Lee were encamped. The evening before the forces of Col. Joshua Chamberlain held the Union flank against repeated Confederate assault.

The cannons roared all afternoon as the Confederate army bombarded Union positions at the top of Cemetery Ridge. The Union artillery kept up a steady fire on the soldiers sheltered in the woods at the bottom of the ridge.

Toward the end of the afternoon, Confederate General George Pickett led 12,500 Confederate soldiers on a charge up the naked ridge. His men never stood a chance as they marched without cover on the entrenched Union army. The target was a small grouping of trees near the center of the Union line. While some of Pickett's men reached the target they were cut down in hand-to-hand combat.

As the slaughter came to an end, the Confederate forces retreated down the ridge and back into the woods. The next morning they began the march back to Virginia. It was the last concentrated Confederate assault on northern soil during the War.

That same day Union General U.S. Grant accepted the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, a port city located on the lower Mississippi River. The fall of Vicksburg not only gave the Union control of the entire Mississippi River, it also cut the Confederacy in half.

The Civil War appeared to be near an end, but it would take almost two more years, and thousands of casualties, before it was finally over.

The turning of the tide

While we celebrate this Independence Day weekend, let us not forget what happened back in 1863.

On July 1, 1863 Confederate troops invaded Pennsylvania looking for shoes and a way to cut Washington, D.C. off from the rest of the Union. The Confederates got the better of the skirmishing that day as Union forces retreated from the town to the hills surrounding Gettysburg.

General Robert E. Lee ordered his men to attack the flanks of the Union army, knowing that if he could get behind Meade's main force on Cemetery Ridge he could cut the Army of the Potomac off from its supply and communication lines. The hero of the day was Joshua Chamberlain who led a regiment of soldiers from Maine. They were the end of the Union line on Little Round Top. They repelled assault after assault after assault the entire afternoon and never broke.

The following day, July 3, 1863, Lee made his plans to attack what he thought was the soft spot of the Union army - the middle. He assumed that Meade would have reinforced the flanks expecting another assault like the previous day. He was wrong.

In the early afternoon hours an artillery barrage shook the countryside as Union and Confederate cannons rained shells for over two hours. Finally, a little after three o'clock, Gen. George Pickett led the charge up Cemetery Ridge. Confederate soldiers had to march 1700 yards across a meadow to get to the ridge. Once they were in range of Union artillery, they were under fire until the battle ended.

The target of Pickett's assault was a group of trees in the middle of the ridge. Despite the horrific carnage, Confederate forces actually reached the Union line before being turned away in bloody hand-to-hand combat.  The Confederates knew the battle was over and retreated back to the woods at the bottom of the ridge.

On Independence Day the Union forces waited for an attack that never came. Lee had lost almost a third of his army and knew he had lost his best chance to win the war. That same day the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi fell after a siege that lasted almost two months. With the fall of Vicksburg, the Union controlled the Mississippi River.

Although the war would continue for almost two more years, the events of that first week of July 1863 marked the turning of the tide.