They will rejoice with me
in the new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the
magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true
friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries."
Written at the opening of that terrible year, 1863, these words
are a forward link with those more celebrated words spoken toward
its close at Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war,
except during the few days immediately following his own
reelection a year later, did Lincoln come so near being free from
care as then. Perhaps that explains why his fundamental literary
power reasserted itself so remarkably, why this speech of his at
the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg on the 19th
of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorable orations
ever delivered:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon
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.
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