My Brother's Keeper My America 1 by Mary Pope Osborne Read Free Book Online

wounded, including a Confederate soldier, at Gettysburg.

    Sixteenth
    President Abraham Lincoln.

    The Battle of Gettysburg did not end the Civil War, which lasted another year and a half. But many historians see it as a turning point leading ultimately to the victory of the North. Fulfilling the dream of President Abraham Lincoln,
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    The people of the town of Gettysburg proceed to the dedication of the

    National Soldiers' Cemetery where President Lincoln delivered his powerful

    Gettysburg Address.
    the United States became one nation again and slavery came to an end.

    The most memorable speech ever made by an American president was Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, given in November 1863 at the dedication of the National Soldiers' Cemetery.
    Generation after generation of Americans has revered President Lincoln's simple but powerful words:
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    "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 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
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    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 this earth."
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    About the Author

    Mary Pope Osborne says, "I'll never forget my trip to Gettysburg. Cemetery Hill seemed so strangely peaceful. Everything quiet, except for the wind in the grass and the
    chur
    of the crickets. It helped me understand how shocking the battle must have been to the people of that town."

    Mary Pope Osborne is the award-winning author of more than forty books for children, among them the best-selling Magic Tree House series,
    Adaline Falling Star,
    and Dear America:
    Standing in the Light: The Captive Diary of Catharine Carey Logan.
    She lives with her husband, Will, in New York City.

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    Acknowledgments
    The author would like to thank her editor, Amy Griffin, for her wonderful support. She would also like to thank Diane Garvey Nesin, Jean Feiwel, and the Gettysburg Visitor Center.
    Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
    Cover portrait and frontispiece by Glenn Harrington.
    Page 101 (top): Slaves on plantation in South Carolina, 1862 by
    H.P. Moore, New-York Historical Society. Page 101 (bottom): General Robert E. Lee on his famous horse,
    Traveler, Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pennsylvania. Page 102: Battle of Gettysburg, ibid.
    Page 103 (top): A soldier in the Civil War, Library of Congress. Page 103 (bottom): The children of a Union soldier, The
    J. Howard Wert Gettysburg Collection. Page 104 (top): A hospital in the Civil War, Atlanta History
    Center. Page 104 (bottom): Abraham Lincoln, Brown Brothers, Sterling,
    Pennsylvania. Page 105: People of Gettysburg proceeding to dedication of
    National Soldiers' Cemetery, Library of Congress.

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    For Gail