On June 30, 1864, Congress enacted and President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act, establishing the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove as the first protected wild land for all time. Photo: Kevin Perez. Tweeted by the US Department of the Interior, 6/30/14.
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A Double Rainbow And The Half DomeRight Place, Right TimeSentinel Dome’s ViewYosemite In The Snow
Painting by Fletcher C Ransom, currently held by the Library of Congress. This depicts Lincoln delivering his 2 minute speech on November 19, 1863. He lamented that the speech had been a great failure.
History has proven otherwise.
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It was the greatest speech ever given by an American President.
It surprised everyone with its brevity: only 272 words.
I learned it in school. Didn’t you?
It was delivered 4-1/2 months after the Battle of Gettysburg, and there are 5 known manuscript copies done in Lincoln’s own hand. The wording varies somewhat between the copies; the link below will get you to each of the 5 so you can compare them with what you memorized.
It is the greatest speech by an American President, and November 19 is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln delivering the speech.
Here’s the text from the Hay draft, or the so-called second draft of the speech that was written either the morning of the speech, or upon Lincoln’s return to Washington. Hay was the personal secretary of Lincoln, and he was given this copy by Lincoln:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battle field of that war. We
are nowhave come to dedicate a portion of it asthea final resting placeoffor 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished ^work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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
thethat cause for which they here gavegavethe last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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Only known portrait of Mary Ball Washington. Quoth her son, our first President, “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”
Abigail Adams, to her son John Quincy Adams, during his first semester at Harvard, “If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the world, and obtaining a knowledge of mankind than any of your contemporaries. That you have never wanted a book but it has been supplied to you, that your whole time has been spent in the company of men of literature and science. How unpardonable would it have been in you to have been a blockhead.”
Statue of the Lincoln family, with Mary Hanks Lincoln holding Abraham. Abraham’s law partner quoted him as saying, “God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.”
“I am a part of everything that I have read.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin, painting by David Martin, 1767
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
– Will Rogers
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
– Harry Truman
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read.”
and
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
– Mark Twain, in a color chromograph on December 21, 1908. Credit: Alvin Langdon Coburn
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
– Ray Bradbury
“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”
and
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
– Groucho Marx
“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.”
– Jacqueline Kennedy
“Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.”
– Babe Ruth
“A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.”
– Abraham Lincoln, shown here reading the Bible to his son, Tad.
Photo by Anthony Berger, 1864.
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