Four scores and seventy years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln made a speech. Little did he know that the speech that the world would “little note, nor long remembered,” would actually still be remembered as one of the most well known speeches throughout the world to this day.
The two-hundred and seventy-two word address was delivered on the most sacred soil in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania after the lives of fifty-one thousand Americans were lost from July 1st-3rd, 1863. On November 19th of that year, President Lincoln found himself in a precarious situation. He found the Union cause closing on the heels of the Confederates and he took the time to look for unity and to look for an end to the bloodiest war that America had ever fought.
Today, one-hundred and fifty years and two days after such address, we can ask ourselves if the words of Lincoln were said in vain. We find the country polarized, not over the issue slavery but still by the mere political climate. Right prior to the Civil War, all of the “The Great Compromisers” died, and with them, so did the concept of unearthing compromise. In 2013, compromise has become a dirty word in politics and each political party blames the other for whatever woe they can think of.
Lincoln believed in strength. He believed that the United States could not go on living with a spilt crack within itself. He was not a compromising kind of guy when he thought something was as critical as was the strength of the Union. Then why then, do people these days call for politicians to compromise and work together when Lincoln and his fellow generals and statesmen were just able to do what they did for the sake of the Nation? The reason is that the problems that The United States faces today cannot be solved by another civil war but by diligent effort and preservation of that union.
Lincoln did not want to fight a civil war and lose the massive amount of lives that were lost; he did so since it was the only last resort. After the 2010 congressional elections, many moderates on both sides were replaced with hard-pushing party liners. Three years later, we see the occasional compromise engulfed by politics that favors an individual party or person over that of the American populace. But the country does not find itself in such peril to take civil war as a serious option, only that of radicals. Instead of working to preserve the cornerstone of this republic, they choose to read Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor and pass bills saying that it would be the only way for people to know what are in them.
As we reflect on the words of Lincoln, I think that it is important to remember that the sacrifices that were given at Gettysburg and all throughout the Civil War were given so that we may become what we are today. As Lincoln closed the Gettysburg Address, he said, “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.” Today, the concept of freedom is no longer atypical to the world. But one-hundred and fifty years later, America moves forward with a sense of pride of where we came from. It is essential to remember that no American soldier should have died in vain and that the value of this union is not worth jeopardizing for the sake of political bickering.
