The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Statue in Lincoln Memorial

我上一篇的重點是在著重在我對Darwin的歷史意義,而對於Lincoln沒有太多著墨.
但是今天是他的生日,我在開車的途中,聽到廣播主持人在討論Lincoln.
中間引述到他的Gettysburg Address(蓋茲堡宣言),聽了很感動,甚至有人評論為美國總統最好的演講,短短278個字,確是個意義深重,感動人心,擲地有聲的一個演講.我想重點不但是個偉大的演講,而林肯他的作為跟帶領美國人向理想邁進,能夠跟演講相符,才會讓這篇演講傳誦不已.

另外今天學到的小常識,猜猜Abraham Lincoln,是哪一黨的總統,我學習到的時候很訝異,我想很多人會跟我一樣訝異,答案請點選Read more

他是代表共和黨選上的總統,這是個跟現在的刻版印象有些不同的概念,甚至許多美國人都會直覺認為他是代表民主黨參選的總統.

以下是他的演說全文
The Gettysburg Address
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.