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I am no Civil War historian, but I did see the Lincoln movie and was moved by the powerful forces in play. I am grateful for the strong leadership our country has been blessed with, and while we are far from perfect, the United States of America is a country I am proud to be a citizen of. Every year, July 4th is set aside for all of us to celebrate the birth of our country. This year we should also remember the 150th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles in our history fought in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Abraham Lincoln and his 'Team of Rivals' committed themselves to the preservation of our Union and determined that they must preserve the nation 'at all costs'. It occurred to me that Abraham Lincoln's address to dedicate the Gettysburg Battlefield is also a speech embedded in our American DNA, so I thought today would be a good day to remind ourselves of our great promise and resolve.

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 battlefield 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.

Amen