Wednesday, November 5, 2008

As a People We Will Get There; YES WE CAN

The Chicago Address - Allen Van Hoosier

Send me your comments, good or bad. I can take it.


Listen to this speech, written not by a speech writer, but by Obama himself Monday evening before he went to sleep. And if any of you watched the Victory speech, he never looked down to read a card, and he did not have earpieces beaming in the speech to his ears. He spoke these words directly at the audience and in to the hearts of the nation, never waivering.



The Gettysburg Address was written by Lincoln, scratched out on a piece of railway stationary on the train while in route to The new Gettysburg National Memorial. Lincoln wasn't even there as the featured speaker, but as a mere afterthought to the main attraction speaker Ed Everett, former Massachusetts governer and Whig Party speaker. Everett, known for his oratory spoke eloquently for 2 hours and 12 minutes, limmering out 13,000+ words. Lincoln, who felt in his heart rose up to murmer a mere 271 words. His words were barely heard. But Everett himself would later tell the president that "I would humble myself Mr. Presdient to think I came as close as your wisdom to the central point of the occasion in 2 hours as you did in 2 minutes." Below is on of the shortest, yet greates speeches in the history of mankind.

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.

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