“Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?”
– Robert Coles
of Lincoln's Gettysburg address had this to say the following day:
“The cheek of every American
must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterances of the man who has been pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the United States.”
Ignore your critics.
Do not engage them in debate.
Everyone remembers Lincoln's words that day.
No one remembers the vicious little critic.
Lincoln was not
the featured speaker at Gettysburg,
but merely took a couple of minutes
following the 2-hour speech of Edward Everett.
Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day,
“I should be glad if I could flatter myself
that I came as near the central idea
of the occasion, in two hours,
as you did in two minutes.”
Shorter
is always better.
# # #
This was not the rabbit hole.
The rabbit hole is entered by clicking the image
at the top of the Monday Morning Memo.
You clicked the lower image (of the tower.)
To enter the rabbit hole,
return to the memo and click the image
of John Hancock's signature.
# # #
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.