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Cute Photos: 4th Graders Dressed As Abe Lincoln Deliver Gettysburg Address In Grand Central
By
Nell Casey
Published Feb 12, 2013
Modified Feb 12, 2013
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(Nell Casey/Gothamist)
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By
Nell Casey
Published Feb 12, 2013
Modified Feb 12, 2013
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To celebrate the 204th birthday of our 16th President, a group of 4th graders from Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn dressed as Abraham Lincoln and took to the Main Concourse of Grand Central Terminal this morning. The mini-Abrahams answered questions about the President's life and his term in office and also performed a stirring rendition of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. There was lots of thoughtful beard scratching as we peppered the Li'l Lincolns with questions about Honest Abe:
- Did you have a Vice President? Yeah, but it was so long ago, I don't quite remember! I'm sorry."
- Anyone else in your cabinet that you remember? Yes I remember Surgeon Stewart. He was there at my assassination at Ford's Theatre. All the other ones…they weren't on my mind at the time when I was President. The Civil War. I'm not sure who was in but I think Grant was in there…some of my generals…
- What years did you serve as President? I served in 1861…I served for five years.
- Did you have any children? [Two girls answer simultaneously] Yes we had four children. All of them died young except for my older son Robert. Their names were Robert, Edward, William and Tad.
- Where were you born, Mr. President? I was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809…today!
All in all, these kids definitely knew their stuff, even if the excitement of the day meant a few forgotten factoids. This was even more evident during their flawless recitation of Lincoln's 1863 speech at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, a.k.a The Gettysburg Address:
Here is a transcript of Lincoln's speech because, unlike these 4th Graders, we don't know it by heart:
"Fourscore 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."
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