Monday.....Memorial Day

We spent the day touring the battlefield at Gettysburg, again, and viewing the parade in the town. In 1856, Stonewall Jackson toured Europe and visited  the Waterloo battlefield. As James L. Robertson Jr. relates in his wonderful biography of Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, The Man, The Soldier, The Legend:
Years later Jackson discussed the pivotal engagement with his army physician, Dr. Hunter McGuire. When McGuire asked whose troop dispositions were the wisest, Napoleon's or Wellington's, Jackson leaped up from a camp stool and replied with much enthusiasm, "Napoleon's, by all odds!" McGuire then asked, "Well why was he whipped then?" Jackson answered without hesitation, "I can only explain it by telling you that I think God intended him to stop right there. Jackson died at Chancellorsville two months before Gettysburg. It is only opinion, but had he been in charge of the Second Corps in Pennsylvania, Lee's army would have been defending the high ground and there would have been a different result to the battle, but this was not God's will, nor was it His will that the Confederate States would succeed in leaving the Union. Today, our military serves honorably and courageously in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yesterday they had served so in Vietnam, Korea and on various battlefields of two World Wars and other conflicts, all the time not knowing how the war would turn out or if they would even survive. This day is dedicated to remembering them and there is more emotion for me now than the Fourth of July. I want to concentrate here on a few of Abraham Lincoln's words from the latter part of the Gettysburg Address given at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery, four and a half months after the battle:
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...  Are we, the living, truly dedicated in continuing their efforts? Do we know that these efforts are still an unfinished work? Do we realize that we still have a great task ahead of us? Is our devotion increasing or stagnant, or even decreasing as summer comes? Can our resolve be described as high or is it only mediocre, if there at all? Every American that has died in each and every conflict of our history will have sacrificed in vain if we succumb to those who wish to weaken our defenses, usurp our liberties and assimilate the United States into a world government. Lincoln's message is very clear. Those who we honor on this day will indeed have died in vain if we do not pick up the banner that fell from their hands. If we remodel our homes or build our fortunes or relax in our entertainments...before...we have done, or without doing at all, what is necessary in upholding and continuing their efforts...then we will have failed them, failed our nation and our loved ones. If we are not interested enough in reading and studying, if we wish, too much, to avoid the contentions that will come because of our efforts, if we let others labor and fail against those who would assimilate us into a world governmenl, while we are busy patting ourselves on the back for our own personal accomplishments, then our generation will live in infamy in the minds of those who, should God will it, come after us.