Sherwood Lithograph Company, circa 1905: NAJ screen shot

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It makes me a little sad that I could not be there at Gettysburg this year for the 161st anniversary of a legendary two minute speech that hinted at the end fighting during the Civil War and began to move the United States of America into a new era of peace and unity.

At least the New York Times sent a correspondent and a photographer and they seemed to capture some of the moment, without even so much as a hint at the playing of “Taps” for American democracy.

The lyrical prose seemed appropriate, however, as the story begins and ends with the bugler’s call.

“The bugler’s call to assemble had sounded, wreaths had been laid, a choral society had sung and dignitaries had spoken, all on a blood-consecrated hill in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. All to commemorate the 161st anniversary of the speech that came to epitomize what it meant to be presidential.”

Unspoken was the sad awaiting of the president-elect, the least presidential man ever elected to high office in the U.S., as the press continues to document the daily insults to democracy in Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, sycophants one and all to an autocratic personality who unapologetically promises to be America’s first tinpot dictator.

As his followers celebrate, seemingly oblivious to the harm that is about to befall them once Trump and his clown car of toady’s take over the U.S. government and proceed to destroy it from within, millions of Americans are still in mourning and await the impending disaster to come with dread.

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln stood six-foot-four and came to dedicate a national soldiers’ cemetery, made necessary by the deadly scene in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg. The 272 words “became a civic prayer of unity and purpose for a nation riven by civil war.”

“Now, exactly two weeks after a contentious presidential election that seemed only to widen the American divide, it was the daunting honor of a Lincoln scholar named Harold Holzer to channel the 16th president and recite his immortal words.”

Delivered at Gettysburg, Pa, on Nov. 19,1863.

“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 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. 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. 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.”

Library of Congress: The Gettysburg Address

On this day in 2024, according to the Times, “The only sounds were the words. Some bowed their heads….”

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was sung, they reported. “A benediction was said. And the bugler played ‘Taps’.”

More Photos

A view of the Eisenhower Farm in Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania: Glynn Wilson

Did you know you can pick the peaches in an old orchard in Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania? Glynn Wilson

A view of one of the monuments in Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania: Glynn Wilson

A view of one of the monuments in Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania: Glynn Wilson

A silhouette of a statue of Robert E. Lee in the Gettysburg National Military Park: Glynn Wilson

A view of Little Round Top from Cemetary Ridge in the Gettysburg National Military Park: Glynn Wilson

A statue commemorating the soldiers from Alabama who died at Gettysburg: Glynn Wilson

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