FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:

I need not tell you what the Battle of Gettysburg meant. These gallant
men in blue and gray sit all about us here.[C] Many of them met upon
this ground in grim and deadly struggle. Upon these famous fields and
hillsides their comrades died about them. In their presence it were an
impertinence to discourse upon how the battle went, how it ended, what
it signified! But fifty years have gone by since then, and I crave the
privilege of speaking to you for a few minutes of what those fifty years
have meant.

What _have_ they meant? They have meant peace and union and vigor, and
the maturity and might of a great nation. How wholesome and healing the
peace has been! We have found one another again as brothers and comrades
in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long
past, the quarrel forgotten--except that we shall not forget the
splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one
another, now grasping hands and smiling into each other's eyes. How
complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how
unquestioned, how benign and majestic, as State after State has been
added to this our great family of free men! How handsome the vigor, the
maturity, the might of the great Nation we love with undivided hearts;
how full of large and confident promise that a life will be wrought out
that will crown its strength with gracious justice and with a happy
welfare that will touch all alike with deep contentment! We are debtors
to those fifty crowded years; they have made us heirs to a mighty
heritage.