Lincoln Calls to Us. It's Our Time.

The greatest Memorial Day speech is only 271 words long. And it wasn't delivered on Memorial Day.

The best Memorial Day speech is only 271 words and it wasn't delivered on Memorial Day, but on November 19, 1863. Read it carefully, it's the most important speech in American military history (and maybe all of American history).

“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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.”

Do you feel that? That's what a great speech can do. It can get you right in the feels. And this one is especially "elevating" and "ennobling." It's a communal speech (an epideictic occasion), which means it's a speech of praise or blame. It's designed to praise and commemorate, but also to urge us.

Lincoln, of course, celebrates those soldiers who died at Gettysburg for giving their lives for our American values, but his speech isn't for them, it's for us. The speech is for the Americans who didn't die at Gettysburg, it's our job to carry on for those who fell. It's our duty to do so.

Our obligation is to preserve what they died for. Our obligation is to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. They perished, but free government lives on. They perished so that free government could live on.

It's on us now.

Read it again. Read it whenever you're feeling depressed about democracy or whenever you feel like you can't fight fascism. And when you read it, read it out loud. Lincoln put the emphasis on the word "people" not on "of, by, for." Read it again. It's our time. Lincoln calls to us.

They can never take Lincoln at Gettysburg away from us. It's the heart of the nation and it's the heart of democracy. Those soldiers who died at Gettysburg were fighting fascism. They fought to liberate an enslaved people and they fought to prevent the enslavers from enslaving them too. It's our speech.