Tuesday will mark 150 years since America's greatest President delivered America's greatest speech.
There exists no definitive text of the Gettysburg Address. Five copies exist in Abraham Lincoln's hand. Most were written out after the fact and no two are identical.
The copy here, printed in the New York Times the day after the Address, is as likely as any to accurately recount the exact words he spoke that day.
Four score and seven years...87 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence; in other words, still recent enough to be carried in living memory. Four score and seven years ago back from today would be 1926, for many of us within the lifetime of our parents or grandparents.
In 1863, the country was neck deep in a fight to decide the meaning of the words "All men are created equal." A fight which, though thankfully less bloody, continues to this day.
My great-great-grandfather fought at Gettysburg, in the bloodsoaked patch known as The Wheatfield. A monument for his regiment, the 62nd Pennsylvania Infantry, stands upon that field to this day.
With the Union's victory in that war the nation did, as Lincoln promised, have a new birth of freedom. Shackles were removed from 6 million people, and with their freedom came a greater freedom for all of us.
Make no mistake, 19th century America was not particularly free by our standards. And most particularly not in the South. Not only were 6 million black American's held in bondage but in order to maintain slavery the rights of it's white citizens were infringed upon as well.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press were both severely limited. Southern postmasters intercepted Northern newspapers. One half of the country was willing to destroy the nation rather than accept its duly elected national government.
There was nothing romantic about slavery, secession or the Confederacy. There was...and is...nothing patriotic about sabotaging the government.
For 250 years the history of the country has been a long, slow, painful march toward greater freedom and equality for all, though with too many tragic missteps along the way.
Let us hope that four score and seven years from now those who come after us can look back and say that we continued along the path laid out by Abraham Lincoln.