(as it might have been)

* Although the 16^th** U.S. President’s Gettysburg Address is pretty poetry, its’ embedded falsehoods have led a people into gross error with regards to their history and Constitutional responsibilities. I have taken the liberty of removing the error and have re-named the address after the foremost American President of the 19^th Century who was incapable of demagoguery.        – Rex Miller  4/28/12

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     Four-score and twenty years ago our Fathers brought forth upon this continent thirteen Sovereign Nations, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal before God and the Law. And that all men possess the sovereign right to freely institute the form of government that suits their certain unalienable rights.

     Now we are engaged in a great and bloody struggle, testing whether these sovereignty’s 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 gave their lives that these liberties 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; that being the truth that tyranny in what-so-ever form is an abomination to a virtuous people.

     It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increase devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; which is the sacred preservation of hearth and home and the sanctity of law; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that liberty, under God, shall remain inviolate; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

** “In saving the Union, I have destroyed the Republic.”   – A. Lincoln

“No punishment is too great for the man who can build his greatness upon his country’s ruin.”    – George Washington

Rex Miller © 2012