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2013-11-20 12:16:14
圖：白宮官方網站
昨日，是美國前總統林肯發表《蓋茲堡演說》（Gettysburg Address）的150週年紀念日，白宮發佈一紙現任總統奧巴馬的手稿，向林肯致意。
1863年11月19號，林肯在賓汐凡尼亞州蓋茲堡（Gettysburg）發表了《蓋茲堡演說》，紀念南北戰爭中犧性的軍人，同時重彰美國建國的平等、自由價值，全文僅約270字，言辭簡煉而意味深長，成為傳世名篇；其中的「民有、民治、民享」（of the people, by the people, for the people）說，更可謂無人不曉。奧巴馬昨日未有親身前往蓋茲堡出席紀念儀式，但發佈了一份手寫的公開信，形容林肯的話語在今時今日仍「使我們相信，無論遇上何種挑戰，我們所珍重的國家、珍視的自由，均將不朽」。
奧巴馬的公開信全長亦是約270字，與林肯的演講辭相若。
In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office. It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln's own hand.
I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: "a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Through the lines of weariness etched in his face, we know Lincoln grasped, perhaps more than anyone, the burdens required to give these words meaning. He knew that even a self evident truth was not self executing; that blood drawn by the lash was an affront to our ideals; that blood drawn by the sword was in painful service to those same ideals.
He understood as well that our humble efforts, our individual ambitions, are ultimately not what matter; rather, it is through the accumulated toil and sacrifice of ordinary men and women -- those like the soldiers who consecrated that battlefield — that this country is built, and freedom preserved. This quintessentially self made man, fierce in his belief in honest work and the striving spirit at the heart of America, believed that it falls to each generation, collectively, to share in that toil and sacrifice.
Through cold war and world war, through industrial revolutions and technological transformations, through movements for civil rights and women's rights and workers rights and gay rights, we have. At times, social and economic change have strained our union. But Lincoln's words give us confidence that whatever trials await us, this nation and the freedom we cherish can, and shall, prevail.1863年7月初的「蓋茲堡戰役」為美國南北戰爭的重要戰役，3日內陣亡人數逾5萬，但同時為聯邦政府奠定勝局。事發5個月後，蓋茲堡國家公墓落成，林肯在落成儀式上致辭，讀出《蓋茲堡演說》，全長僅約兩分鐘。《演講》中指，今日儀式上的言辭很快就會被遺忘，但陣亡戰士捍衞自由信念的功蹟將永為世人銘記；150年後，林肯的這篇精彩演說卻得以傳世，未被遺忘。
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 on a great battlefield 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 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 the earth.
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