Resolute Memorial - Gettysburg Address 1863

If tomorrow all the things were gone, I'd worked for all my life

And I had to start again, with just my children and my wife

I'd thank my lucky stars, to be living here today

Cause the flag still stands for freedom, and they can't take that away

And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free

And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me

And I'd gladly stand up next to you, and defend her still today

Cause there aint no doubt I love this land, God bless the USA

God Bless The USA, Lee Greenwood (1984) 

On Memorial Day, the exceptional nation that is America gratefully honors the men and women who have died protecting it. 

Back in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln solemnly addressed a divided, weary nation on the grounds of the Battle of Gettysburg, paid homage to those who died there so that our nation might live, and encouraged Americans to continue to fight for the noble principles on which our nation was founded:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on 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 at 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 beyond our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember 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 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 on 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 the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

God Bless The USA (Rock Version), Lee Greenwood & Drew Jacobs (2024)