Gettysburg, Adams County – There was a special celebration in Gettysburg today looking back in time. 149 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery, 4 1/2 months after Union armies defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg.
“Lincoln suggested here at Gettysburg and in his second inaugural address to try and grasp the meaning of our existence is the test always before us, before us all,” says movie director Steven Spielberg who directed the new movie, “Lincoln.”
Lincoln’s life was a struggle at times, leading him into depression as a young man. Friends feared he was suicidal.
“Lincoln said he was willing to die but had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived and to leave the world a better place for him having lived in it was what he so desired,” says Doris Kearns Goodwin who wrote a biography about Lincoln’s life called “Team of Rivals.”
Spurred on by his own internal drive for greatness, Lincoln was later elected as the 16th President, leading the country through its toughest moral crisis.
For the past decade, Steven Spielberg has been working toward the release of “Lincoln” which examines the final four months of the President’s life.
“Like most people who spend a lot of time thinking about Abraham Lincoln, he’s come to feel like one of my oldest and dearest friends,” Spielberg says.
For more information about Monday’s event, click here.