A timeless address

Banks, schools and most civic institutions will be closed on Monday in recognition of Presidents Day, a federal holiday in which Americans are asked to give pause and reflect on those who have held the highest office of the land.

As both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were born in February, Congress voted in 1971 to recognize the two men- and the presidency- on the third Monday of February.

Both men sacrificed greatly for their country. One gave his life.

During a presidential election year, it's only fitting to hold both men- each an exemplary president in his own time- as examples of what should be expected of our nation's leader.

Both Lincoln and Washington served in times of war. And although the battlefields on which U.S. soldiers fought then are far different than those today, we, too, are a nation at war. For this reason, the relevancy of the words spoken by Lincoln nearly 145 years ago as he stood on the battlefield in Gettysburg continues to hold today.

Below is the simple, almost poetic, address he gave during a war that nearly tore our nation apart.

"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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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."

- Abraham Lincoln, 1863