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> ./2025-11-03.gettysburg.md

Lenses
(coming soon!)

---
name: Addressing Gettysburg.
summary: A. Lincoln's Logbook
composer: Abraham Lincoln, and Calliope Youngblood
summary:
  - backlog
  - speech
  - code
---

Here is [Lincoln's Gettysburg address][gettysburg];
many people imagine how simple it is,
but there were four or five copies
which each had differing language for Abe to explore.

We'll soon have a breakout diff mode so you can explore that here,
or you can click through and read old-school now. ^

My day's essay is here to examine only a couple phrases
carrying unique and poignant meaning.

[gettysburg]: https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm>

- - -

> Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth,
> upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
> and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Basics. Carry on.

> Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
> or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.
> [....]

Rearranging his grammar for a more modern arrangement,

> "It is altogether fitting and proper that we"
> "are engaged in"
> "testing whether that nation"
> "can long endure."

Damn, Lincoln. Means to an end, no?

Only, look closely at the end.
He calls the Civil War, simply, a test of endurance.

Cold-ass bugger.

Sure, a nation's endurance is something people seem to care for.
I'm sure, then as now, there were as many pro-nationalists as pro-natalists.

Carrying on, because we all recognize, endorse, and embrace
how their mid-1800 test - their experiment - concluded, no?

> "The world"
> "can never forget what they did here."

Sir, yes sire.

> "It is for us,"
> "rather, to be dedicated here."

Slice and dice, if he also needs to play by the modern rules of X.

> "It is rather for us to be here dedicated"
> "that from these honored dead we take"
> "that this nation, under God,"
> "shall have a new birth of freedom"

He had some squishy pieces in the middle; so I squished.

In essence, our soldiers -
the boys who were our many-grand's-bro's,
died pursuing a national rebirth.

Again, from the basics:

> "dedicated to the proposition that all [hu]men are created equal."

Hold on, there's more.

> and that government
> of the people, by the people, for the people,
> shall not perish from the earth.

Did this guy really imagine an immortal government?
You think he said "this government", "shall not perish"?

Damn, check again:

- "This"? no.
- "Government", yes.

He clearly presumes that a nation needs rebirth,
meaning succession,
and that such successor should again

- be composed "of [the] people",
- be carried "by [the] people",
- be dedicated "for [the] people".

Did our nation expire and become borne, again?

Or are we sleeper cells in a zombie land?

Choose the rule book you read.
You all are hanging on to the mark one campaign;
those copies per-hap(pening)s expired in 1865.

Marque 2 had been a slow-broiling appraisal
of the blood spilled across middle america.
Some people had demanded to add back the dose of poison.

Check again, though - this one's dead also.
Shut down, unplugged.
No means of launching again.
People disappeared, bodies decaying, memories erased.
Someone help.

Seriously, help.

- be composed "of people",
- be carried "by people",
- be dedicated "for people".