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Lincoln scholar, Harold Holzer, addressed the audience at Gettysburg this year. - David Lockmiller - 11-24-2024 09:59 AM
"On Blood-Soaked Ground, a ‘Prayer for the Future’ of a Divided Land"
New York Times, November 24, 2024
Dan Barry, senior writer for the New York Times
The Lincoln scholar, Harold Holzer, addressed the [audience]: “No matter what words you may have heard or will hear — words that may seem tumultuous, or angry, or even hurtful — this is the voice of America.”
He began: “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.”
As Mr. Holzer read, slowly, flawlessly, the biblical cadence of Lincoln’s simple language cast its mesmeric spell. The words and imagery, intertwining the specific battle of Gettysburg and the ideological battle over equality, carried particular potency, given that a few dozen yards away, inscribed stones marked the resting places of thousands who had died for national unity, hundreds of them rechristened for eternity as “unknown.”
The only sounds were the words. Some bowed their heads.