Obama offers up a handwritten tribute to the Gettysburg Address
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, President Obama has penned a handwritten tribute to the speech.
The president wrote that after First Lady Michelle Obama and his children go to bed, he'll sometimes visit a room in the White House that Abraham Lincoln used as his office and read one of the original versions of the famous speech, written in Lincoln's own hand.
"I linger on those 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,'" Mr. Obama wrote in his note.
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Lincoln understood, Mr. Obama wrote, that "our humble efforts, our individual ambitions, are ultimately not what matters; rather, it is through the accumulated toil and sacrifice of ordinary men and women -- those like the soldiers who consecrated the battlefield -- that this country is built, and freedom preserved."
The president said 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," Mr. Obama continued. "But Lincoln's words give us confidence that whatever trials await us, this nation and the freedoms we cherish can, and shall, prevail."
The White House posted Mr. Obama's reflections on its website and is encouraging visitors to share the president's note with others via social media.
Mr. Obama also marked the anniversary by reciting the Gettysburg Address for a project spearheaded by documentarian Ken Burns. However, his reading generated some controversy among conservatives because the version he read did not contain the words "under God." The White House explained Mr. Obama read one of the original drafts, as Burns requested.
