charge of the exercises of the day have graciously excused me on the
grounds of public obligations from preparing such an address, but I will
not deny myself the privilege of joining with you in an expression of
gratitude and admiration for the men who perished for the sake of the
Union. They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration
should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs.
We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink
at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves selves
drank.

A peculiar privilege came to the men who fought for the Union. There is
no other civil war in history, ladies and gentlemen, the stings of which
were removed before the men who did the fighting passed from the stage
of life. So that we owe these men something more than a legal
reëstablishment of the Union. We owe them the spiritual reëstablishment
of the Union as well; for they not only reunited States, they reunited
the spirits of men. That is their unique achievement, unexampled
anywhere else in the annals of mankind, that the very men whom they
overcame in battle join in praise and gratitude that the Union was
saved. There is something peculiarly beautiful and peculiarly touching
about that. Whenever a man who is still trying to devote himself to the
service of the Nation comes into a presence like this, or into a place
like this, his spirit must be peculiarly moved. A mandate is laid upon
him which seems to speak from the very graves themselves. Those who
serve this Nation, whether in peace or in war, should serve it without
thought of themselves. I can never speak in praise of war, ladies and
gentlemen; you would not desire me to do so. But there is this peculiar
distinction belonging to the soldier, that he goes into an enterprise
out of which he himself cannot get anything at all. He is giving
everything that he hath, even his life, in order that others may live,