What is the significance of Gettysburg?
Gettysburg is the site of the most significant battle ever fought on American soil. For three days in July in 1863, 165,000 men fought there and 51,000 of them became casualties in defense of their beliefs. Four months later, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery there. In just a few minutes and a few hundred words, he described his vision for a reunited nation — a “new birth of freedom.” It was what many consider the best summation in our nation’s history of the meaning and price of freedom. In the years following the war, Gettysburg became a symbol for reconciliation, as soldiers from the Union and the Confederacy returned to the battlefield to shake hands across the stone walls. Seventy-five years later, in 1938, surviving veterans of the war — several thousand in number with an average age of 93 — returned to Gettysburg as President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Peace Memorial there. Today, Gettysburg is truly “O
