Gettysburg Address to be honored Monday

The Forty-Ninth State Fellows Program of the UAA Honors College wishes to call the UAA community's attention to the 144th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on Monday, November 19. Many scholars regard the speech, given at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg four months after the decisive Union victory there in 1863, as the most important public address in American history. In two minutes, Lincoln, invoking the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence, redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, create a unified nation in which states' rights no longer dominated, defined a democracy in terms of government of the people, by the people, for the people, and defined republicanism in terms of freedom, equality and democracy. In a number of states the anniversary is celebrated as "Dedication Day," commemorating Lincoln's re-dedication of the nation to the proposition that "all men are created equal." More information is available from history professor Steve Haycox (786-1776, afswh1@uaa.alaska.edu.)