It is best to come here at dusk, as I do when I take students to Gettysburg, and listen to the call of mourning doves as we look out over the graves in this pastoral setting. It is then that we contemplate the real meaning of “that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” Gettysburg is important not primarily as the high-water mark of the Confederacy, but as the place where “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ADDRESS
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE
SOLDIER'S CEMETERY IN GETTYSBURG
NOVEMBER 19,1863
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 the 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES M. MCPHERSON was born in North Dakota and grew up in Minnesota, where he graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College. He did his graduate study at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he became fascinated by the American Civil War and the issues over which it was fought. While in graduate school he began visiting Civil War battlefields, including Gettysburg. During forty years on the faculty at Princeton University, he has taken students, colleagues, alumni, and many other groups on tours of the Gettysburg battlefield on numerous occasions. Hallowed Ground is his fourteenth book on the Civil War era. His Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988) won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1989, and his For Cause and Comrades (1997) won the Lincoln Prize in 1998. He is currently serving as president of the American Historical Association.
Copyright © 2003 by James M. McPherson
Maps copyright © 2003 by Jackie Aher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher
Published by Crown Journeys, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. www.randomhouse.com
CROWN JOURNEYS and the Crownjourneys colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McPherson, James M.
Hallowed ground: a walk at Gettysburg /James M. McPherson.—1st. ed.
p. cm. — (Crown journeys)
1. Gettysburg National Military Park (Pa.)—Tours. 2. Gettysburg,
Battle of, Gettysburg, Pa., 1863. 3. Walking—Pennsylvania—
Gettysburg National Military Park—Guidebooks. I. Title. II. Series.
E475.56.M43 2003
973.T349—dc21 2002035154
eISBN: 978-0-307-52975-6
v3.0
Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg Page 9