51,000 Casualties in One Battle

"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."

These were the words of President Abraham Lincoln commiserating with the nation's sorrow at the horrendous 51,000+ casualties, in just one battle to keep the states united. At the dawning of the 87th American Independence Day commemoration, July 4th, 1863, the lifeless bodies of more than 7,000 young Americans were strewn upon the bloody pastoral fields of Gettysburg. With his speech at the war cemetery there, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln re-dedicated the nation to the war effort and to the ideal that no soldier at Gettysburg, whether Union or Confederate, had died in vain.

Trackedback at Mudville Gazette
[gettysburg] [Abraham Lincoln] [july 4th] [gettysburg address]