In The Distance

In the distance, we see a monument dedicated in 1911 to the men of our community who participated in this nation's Civil War. The Civil War (1861 to 1865) cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and was fought over fundamental ideas relating to the value of the human spirit. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), our 16th President, was Commander of the Federal Army during this period. Please read the Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane for a soldier's perspective of the Civil War., President Lincoln, considered by many to be our greatest President, spent his formative years in southern Indiana about 250 miles south of here. He is known for his ideals, honesty, and humanitarianism. You can read about him in the thousands of books and articles written since his death in 1865., Many of us remember Mr. Lincoln for an expression of ideas spoken on Thanksgiving Day in 1863. He had been invited, some say as an afterthought, to help dedicate a Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This brief speech has captured the imaginations of millions for its concise expression of fundamental beliefs and the changes these beliefs engendered., 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 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."