Gettysburg Address

[Christine]

The other day while I was going over some of my research I reread the funeral sermon of General Frederick Lander, who died March 2, 1862, and was a bit surprised at some of the words which seemed to be echoed by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address 1 1/2 years later. I know Lincoln was at the funeral of General Lander, so I am wondering if those words were typical of the era, or if perhaps the sermon by Bishop Thomas Clark inspired Lincoln's speech. Anyone know?

This was from Lander's funeral:

"Our heroes do not fall in vain. There are solemn and instructive lessons which come to us from their honored graves. Their blood cries to us from the ground, and solemnly charges us to be faithful to the great cause for which they have sacrificed their all. After what they have done and suffered, shall we dare to falter? Shall we dare to be untrue to the solemn work which they have left for us to finish?"

And the Gettysburg Address: ". . . 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. . ."