by Tom Stilp JD, MBA/MM, LLM, MSC, DBA, July 2nd, 2026
The Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, killing over 50,000 Union and Confederate soldiers, ended just a day before July 4, 1863. (ref 1)
At less than ten (10) sentence long, the Gettysburg Address is an example of one of the finest speeches in the English language. Lincoln concluded his speech at Gettysburg with a powerful invocation that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (Lincoln, 1863).
At the time of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, 87 years after the Declaration of Independence, thousands were dying on the bloody battlefield, tens of thousands more were wounded or captured, or dying of infectious diseases.
Lincoln was despised, hated and ridiculed not only in the Southern Confederacy, but in the Northern Union as well. “Lincoln’s War” they said. Newspapers were enormously influential and powerfully partisan.
Those opposed to Lincoln relentlessly attacked his administration and his family. While Lincoln and his wife Mary were privately mourning the death of their 11-year-old son William from typhoid fever (believed to be from contaminated water in the White House), Lincoln was trying to get Congress to end slavery.
People usually think of success as a list of accomplishments, but with Lincoln, it became a list of obstacles, difficulties, defeats and losses to overcome.
This year, on July 4th we will celebrate the semiquincentennial of the oldest democracy in the world. The US economy is the largest in the world at $32.4 trillion, the next largest economy, China, a country with four-times the population of the US, is at $20.9 trillion, and Germany is in a distant third place at $5.5 trillion. (ref 2)
250 years later, the nation “so conceived and so dedicated” has endured. Despite our flaws and differences, the US has survived as one of the most prosperous countries in the World given our unique system of laws. Happy 250th Birthday!
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address#/media/File:Gettysburg_Address_Amalgamated_Text.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal(2026)
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.24404500/?st=text
Lincoln, A. (1863). Gettysburg address [Speech transcript]. Retrieved from American Rhetoric: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm
This In the Loop edition is based on a former article, “Reflections: 160 Years after the Murder of Abraham Lincoln.”
