The Same Battlefield

Two score and five years ago our forebears brought forth upon this continent a Nation

dedicated to the lasting proposition that all Americans are created equal and that no person is above the law.

Now we are engaged in a new civil war, testing whether this Nation, or any nation which has endured for two centuries may indeed long survive.

We are gathered here after a long battle on this same ground to consecrate and dedicate ourselves to the task of the survival of democracy and of its rebirth; but those who have suffered and died have consecrated it far beyond our poor power to add or detract.

It is now for us the living to be still dedicated to that cause for which they and those who cared for them have given a lasting measure of devotion. It is for us the living to be dedicated to the cause of freedom and the surcease of suffering. It is for us this 245 years after the founding of the Republic to highly resolve that this Nation under God shall not perish by either division or disease: and that we therefore resolve that our government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the Earth.

-Albert Turner Goins

7/5/2021