The following is a public service. This week filmmaker Ken Burns, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, launched an online initiative to encourage folks to gain a greater appreciation of it by reading the Address out loud. He has created a mashup video featuring all living Presidents, and other celebrities, reading snippets of the Address, to illustrate the incredible power of this humble 2-minute speech.
Now, be honest, beyond “Four score and seven years ago,” how much of the Address do you know by heart? And have you ever stopped and admired the poetry of each phrase? Considered how such a concise little thing can be constructed to such perfection?
Well, here’s your chance. Below is the entire Gettysburg Address. But instead of mashed, it’s scrambled. Go ahead and admire each phrase. And then, either by reading it out loud, or by cutting and pasting, see if you can put it back to its awesome beautiful whole. Reconstruction was never so much fun. You are welcome.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
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.
That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
A new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
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.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.
the quick Sliver 