One of my favorite new age music artists, who lives near Gettysburg PA, wrote a piece and created a video called On Hallowed Ground to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln's Address. It is a very noble piece. His name is George Wallace, which is kind of ironic since that's also the name of a segregationist governor of Alabama who stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent a black student from attending. This was almost exactly 100 years after the battle, and prompted JFK to give a speech of comparable quality to Lincoln's, in which he introduced the civl rights bill.

Lincoln dedicated the hallowed ground of the Gettysburg battlefield by saying the soldiers consecrated it more than his words ever could. A noted historian in Ken Burns' The Civil War series pointed out that the battle continues and we all have a part to play,[1] just as JFK and the civil rights movement did. We have thus resolved that the soldiers did not die in vain, because we have continued to bring greater freedom into birth.

Now as the 2020s unfolds, we are in the midst of a cold civil war, and we must summon ourselves to conceive and perceive the will to freedom within ourselves and each other, and dedicate the ground we walk upon as hallowed, so we might preserve it for all the future battles and births to come.

[1] Barbara J. Fields

LINKS

My Band of writers essays

Fly Away: The Who and Our Generations

Essays by members of the UU Band of Writers

The Civil War by Ken Burns (1990, reissued 2015)

Was it not as in the old days with accompanying footage from a 1938 Battle of Gettysburg 75th anniversary event

The Gettysburg Address

Battle Cry of Freedom, arranged for piano for The Civil War series

Barbara Fields: The Civil War is in the Present as Well as in the Past, from Ken Burns Civil War Doc

America is in a cold civil war, by Vox

The Earth is Our Mother, her sacred ground we walk upon, by Libana