November 19, 2016 - President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863 to dedicate the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg following the bloody Battle of Gettysburg the previous July. Today, November 19, exactly 153 years later, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands hosted a special morning of Civil War-era music and the recitation of Lincoln’s speech by famed Lincoln Presenter Robert Broski.
The first band to play was the "Mountain Fifes and Drums" from the San Bernardino mountain area.
The second band was the "Camp Carleton Cornet Band" named after the largest Civil War camp of several within the San Bernardino area.
"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 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field 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 can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not 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 carried on. 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, have a new birth of freedom; and that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."