One nation . . .

So yesterday I read this column in the Washington post by EJ Dionne, written in reaction to our recent gubernatorial elections, talking about how our country is dividing into two parts along ideological lines--the whole red states and blue states thing--and he said:

It is 138 years since the Civil War ended. ... Up in heaven, Abe Lincoln must be shaking his head in astonishment. The country he sought to keep united is pulling apart politically, and largely along the same lines that defined Honest Abe's election victory in 1860.

His point seemed even more relevant in light of the reactions to yesterday's ruling in MA from those opposed to gay marriage, like, oh, my president. I was in bed this morning listening to Morning Edition on NPR and their coverage of the issue, and feeling once again rather depressed in general about the future of this country of ours (by the way, it is really difficult to amend the US Constitution) when the next story came on.

Turns out it was 140 years ago today that a group of people gathered on a field in southeastern PA to hear a very long speech from one of the great orators of the day, followed by a few words from the current president, Abraham Lincoln. These 267 words always make me feel a good deal better about this Great Experiment we call a country, and they seem particularly prescient today, so I will quote them in full--but you can also hear Sam Waterston read them.

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.