The government of the people dedicating...

At this moment, on local television there is being broadcast the programme: Death and the Civil War: American Experience. It is another fine programme in the series of this necessary television network. It brings up a point particular to a point being argued in this presidential contest and other political battles, between the party of the Democracy and the one of the plutocracy. Before the War for the Union, the United States of America, and during the war--the Confederacy, had no provision to provide for dead soldiers. It was not considered a government responsibility, but left to individual initiative. The war killed so many men, that, it became so.

Not until the creation of the first national cemetery at Gettysburg did the American government accept responsibility for war dead. Many children memorised the 273 words of Abraham Lincoln's address beginning, "Four score....". The battle was fought July 1, 2 and 3 in 1863. The count of dead bodies on the battlefield was 8,900. The consecration, mentioned by Lincoln, was on November 19.

In front of Cleveland's Board of Education, there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

his Gettysburg Address is on a bronze plaque

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 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.