The Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg Battlefield. Photo: New York Times.

Last Thursday's New York Times has an article, "Gettysburg Casino Plan Starts Whole New Battle," about the onset of gambling in the State of Pennsylvania, and the jockeying going around the state in order to "win" a casino for the various localities. One of the places under consideration is Gettysburg.

From the article: A casino spokesman says the casino would be a mile and a half from the battlefield, "and there won't be anyone dressed in Civil War costume."

Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

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.

Local residents say that the battlefield is actually the whole town. Graphic: New York Times.

Segway in Annapolis, Maryland. Photo: Washington Post.