Remember Those Who Sacrificed

I grew up about 25 minutes outside of Gettysburg, PA. It seemed like we went on a field trip there every year… literally. I was a Girl Scout, and aside from the thousands of cookies that were sold, we went camping at Gettysburg.

When I was in seventh grade, one of our assignments, aside from memorizing the presidents and reciting them…. IN ORDER… was to memorize and recite the Gettysburg Address.

Now that I am married and live in North Carolina, have kids of my own, and a much larger perspective on the world, I realize how important it is that I had the privilege of living and visiting such an important place in our country’s history.

The sheer number of soldiers who died on that battlefield, in that city, at that time is staggering.

Of the over 50,000 casualties, 7,058 were fatalities (3,155 Union, 3,903 Confederate). Another 33,264 had been wounded (14,529 Union, 18,735 Confederate), and 10,790 were missing (5,365 Union, 5,425 Confederate).

This was over three days of intense fighting, from July 1 to July 3. The day before July 4, our nation’s Independence Day. Somehow, I doubt that bit of irony was on anyone’s mind at the time.

Today, leading up to Memorial Day, I received an email with the text of the Gettysburg Address. What a poignant reminder of how far we still have to go in so many ways for which those men suffered and died. We’ve come so far and have so far to go.

So, this weekend, as we celebrate the beginning of summer with picnics and fireworks (although here in NC, it’s going to be a wet, cool Memorial Day weekend), I always try to refocus on the real reason we take a moment from work. That men, women, and their families have all suffered and died for our freedom.

Thank you to all of you whose families have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

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.

The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863