Abraham Lincoln’s Historic Gettysburg Address updated

Abraham Lincoln Statue at the Gettysburg Visitor Center

150 + four score and seven years ago some of our parents brought forth to North America, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.

Now we are engaged in the 150th anniversary of that great civil war, that tested whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war (Gettysburg). We have come to re-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, although a little redundant-

Since, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, now all dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will  long remember what Abraham Lincoln said here, just like it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living in 2013, rather, to be dedicated  to the unfinished work which they who fought in Gettysburg have 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.

by To The Moon and Abraham Lincoln

The  un-updated Nov 19, 1863 Version

 

The 4 Toms of Pennsylvania

1. Thomas Mifflin – first governor of Pennsylvania, 1 of the 39 signers of the Declaration of Independence, expelled from the Quakers for being an officer in the Revolutionary War and became a Lutheran, famous portrait with his wife Sarah, spent all of his money and buried at government expense in Lancaster, PA (b. 1744 d. 1800, gov 1790-1799)

 

2. Thomas McKean – 2nd governor of PA, 1 of the 39 signers of the Declaration of Independence, first chief justice of PA, father of 10 children, buried in the Laurel Hill cemetery in Philadelphia (b 1734 d. 1817, gov 1799-1808)

3. Tom Ridge – 43rd governor of PA, did not sign the Declaration of Independence, Republican, appointed first Secretary of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush (b. 1945, Gov 1995-2001)

4. Tom Corbett – current governor of PA (46th), did not sign the declaration of independence, Republican, and not doing a very good job. (b 1949 gov 2011-now)