Deandrea Hamilton

Editor

February 7, 2022 – We Remember, the indomitable Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America.  Mr. Lincoln, whose likeness sits as a larger than life symbol of the enduring impact a mortal man can accomplish when he is devoted to a cause and has unshakable conviction about humanity’s need for a profound change.

The President, at 56 years old, was fatally shot because he believed that the fearfully and wonderfully made Black people of America were born to be free; he fought for the emancipation of these Americans and though he died before he could see the fruit of the 13^th Amendment which be adopted in December of 1865, he departed the earth on the morning of April 15, the same year, knowing that irreversible legislation fueled by a new spirit of righteousness had been uncorked because of his (and others) unwavering faith.

We take an excerpt from his most commanding and memorable discourse, The Gettysburg Address, said to be delivered by this towering figure who stood at six feet, four inches tall in three powerful minutes.  Surely, you will recognize and accept that the spirit of this impeccable presentation continues to be echoed by men and women in leadership some 159 years later.

“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.”

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863