gonfission:
Thanks for the recognition WGT
Happy Fourth of July to all, and a belated 1st, to out northern brethren.
"from another thread"
txzdave: No more. No less.
Dave, as this holiday is predicated on bearing arms, against a once tyrannical government, to secure a land of the free, & home of the brave, I am reminded of the law of the west.
Something you know of, being out there in the great state of Texas I'm sure.
In a Tombstone Arizona cemetery, named "Boot Hill", there is an epitaph on a grave stone that reads;
" Here lies Lester Moore, 4 slugs from a 44, no less, no more"
What a way to be immortalized, eh?
Happy fourth to all who remember how we got to this day, today. May it never be forgotten,
FREEDOM, IS NOT FREE !
As noted above, historian George Bancroft asked President Lincoln for a
copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers. When Lincoln sent his copy on
February 29, 1864, he used both sides of the paper, rendering the manuscript
useless for lithographic engraving. So Bancroft kept this copy and Lincoln
had to produce an additional one (Bliss Copy). The Bancroft copy is now owned by
Cornell University.
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 here 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.