Eulogy Of Abraham Lincoln

Remembering a Deceased American Hero, As He Remembered Others

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to this proposition that all men are created equal."

On the eve of a great national tragedy, the assassination of our 16th national President, Abraham Lincoln, we choose to honor him, by recalling his memory and legacy through a dedication speech given two years ago at Gettysburg through which he shared his vision for this nation's future and the end of our worst war.

July 1-3, 1863, the Union's Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia met at the deceivingly unimportant little town of Gettysburg for a battle which would become the bloodiest in U.S. history, where the mere stench of the thousands of deceased soldiers was enough to make the surrounding towns people violently ill in the weeks following this great American travesty.

David Wills, a prominent attorney of the region, purchased 17 acres of Pennsylvanian land for a cemetery with which he planned to dedicate to the honorable soldiers who lost their lives that grey day. Four and a half months following the battle of Gettysburg where a terrible price of 7,500 lives was abruptly collected, the dedication of the land where so many lives were seized, was held on November 19, 1863.

Abraham Lincoln knew that this was not just any battle, but a

turning point, not only regarding the war, but also regarding the nation's future. Lincoln's speech was able to take the focus off of the original disputes between the Union and the Confederacy (regarding nullification, states rights, and other policies of the like), and made the war a fight for equal rights for all American citizens, turning the war into a war solely about slavery.