The Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address is not Abraham Lincoln's former residence.

It was the speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln, one of the US' most important Presidents after the battle in Gettysburg in which scores of Americans fighting each other perished. It is short and to the point so I quote it in its entirety here :

"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."

(Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler.)

It is such sheer irony that I, a Lincolnite since I was in Grade 1, made my trip to the Gettysburg National Cemetery after 3 long years here in the East Coast. Three years I wanted to go and never had the chance. The double irony was we only went there because it was close to Hanover where the Utz Potato Chip factory was situated.

I have been to the Antietam Battlefield 4 or 5 times. I went to Jamestown of Pocahontas and John Rolfe fame. I also went to Yorktown where the British finally gave up and surrendered to George Washington and his rugged army of patriots. Those were in Virginia 3 hours away from where we live. But I have never been to Gettysburg and its only less than 2 hours away.

Now you might ask yourself, whats this fascination with Lincoln from a first grader from Asia ? Why is this trip so important and momentous to me ? I am not an natural-born American and the famous speech happened centuries ago.

You see, I was born on February 12 and Lincoln was born on February 12. Not the same year of course nor the same century. Otherwise, this blog will be eerie. I heard of strange things ghosts do but blogging is not one of them.

My mother who was the daughter of my American grandmother told me that I was destined for greatness because I shared Abraham Lincoln's birthday. That's my dear mother, ladies and gentlemen, my original cheerleader. I had many cheerleaders in my life but she was the first and she was the most loyal.

In any case, that explained my fascination with anything Lincolnian. So there we were trying to find our way from our small "educational trip" at Utz. It turned out that Getty was just a few minutes away from Hanover but in a different county, Adam's county.

We went through this quaint little downtown rotunda and saw a nice Christmas tree and some old time shops brimming with Americana. One was even named Abe's Antique. But we weren't there to shop, at least not me. We went straight to the site.

I did not realize it was a cemetery at first because when I asked for directions, the fifty something year old American did not tell me that it was. I asked where I can find the exact spot where Lincoln made the address. He told me to just go straight until we hit Lincoln Avenue through the rotunda and then head left to the street leading to the cemetery.

But it was getting dark and so we ran through graves and tombstones and taking pictures of the place until we saw the monument of the center marking the site of the address. It was a four-sided monument with statues of men and women on each side in different poses which I did not have time to find out the meaning.

The speech itself in Lincoln's handwriting was recreated in bronze but it was not exactly readable. I wonder if Lincoln suffered from writer's cramp like me because it was really not very legible. Or it maybe because it was twilight already and I did not bring my reading glasses. The writer's cramp theory was more appealing to me because that is another thing in common potentially between me and the man.

So we took pictures of the monument and the other monument dedicated to the New York contingent that lost many soldiers there. The gate of the cemetery displayed the names of the States that fought on the Union side against the Confederates of the South.

We also took pictures of the graves of Unknown Soldiers who were buried there but where not identified, all 411 of them. There were no names or tombstones, just square pieces of concrete with numbers that looked liked the stone markings (mujon) that defined the boundaries of real estate back home.

Wreaths were laid in the tombstones that had names on them. Probably of the prominent residents of Pennsylvania. But that is just another hunch of mine, most of the time I'm right but I'll check it out.

Like I was saying it was a twilight hour and atmosphere was kind of eerie and it was a blustery winter late afternoon. The pictures we took were quite bone-chilling and in fact, I superimposed the monuments with the witchy trees there. Just check out the pics and you'll see what I mean.

Remember The Blair Witch project ? It was shot in the forests of Maryland. Pennsylvania is right on the border. I wasn't satisfied with the trip because the looming darkness ruined some of our shots.

But there's a good chance we will go back there. There's outlets stores in Gettysburg by the highway, we saw it on the way back home.