If President Abraham Lincoln were alive to give a Memorial Day Address in 2022, he might say something like this:
Twelve score and six years ago (1776 ) our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all human beings, male and female, regardless of race, color or creed, are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a national
holiday celebrating that nation. We are met across this continent on this day
to recall that portions of our land serve as a final-resting place for those
who gave their lives that that nation
might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
Brave men and women, living and
dead, have consecrated this continent far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember
today’s memorial observance, but we can
never forget what they did here. Rather,
it is for us the living to be re-dedicated this day to the unfinished work
which those who have fought for this nation have so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us on this memorial day 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.:
