This article originally appeared in the pages of the Gettysburg Times, July of 2024. It was penned by Wendy Allen of the Lincoln Fellowship of Pennsylvania, in the hopes of sharing the work the Fellowship does.

On July 4th, 2024, Dr. Ashley Whitehead Luskey delivered a moving keynote address for the “One Hundred Nights of Taps” ceremony. Dr. Luskey is the Assistant Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. She is also a member of the board of directors for the Lincoln Fellowship. Here are excerpts from her speech.

On July 7, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln emerged from the White House to address a crowd of supporters who had come with a brass band to celebrate the recent dual victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. "I would like to speak," Lincoln said, "in all praise that is due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of this country from the beginning of this war, not on occasions of success, but upon the more trying occasions of the want of success.... I say I would like to speak in praise of these men...but...I should dislike to mention the name of a single officer, lest in doing so I wrong some other one whose name may not occur to me.”

In his refusal to spotlight the names of even just one individual, Lincoln revealed his steadfast belief in the foundational ideal of our Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary they had just commemorated—the equality of mankind. To Lincoln, the suffering of the soldiers knew no distinction between rank or commission. Their sacrifice, demonstrated in Gettysburg and on the other Union battlefields, he believed, were shared by men who were equals, on behalf of securing the equality of all.

Reflecting on the legacies of the fallen of Gettysburg some 20 years after the battle, Brigadier General Alexander Webb similarly recalled, “This three days’ contest was a constant recurrence of scenes of self-sacrifice on the part of all....The dead knew not, it may be, all that they have done; but they died for us, and for our country.... We approach their graves in reverence and in tears. We now know how much we owe to them. Rest, patriot spirits, rest.”

Like Lincoln, Webb refrained from singling out the names of any particular individuals, rather he spoke of the equal sacrifice shared by all: “We live to know how great was your sacrifice—how great was our gain...you have died that we might live, and this nation.”  And in his closing remarks, he called forth upon the collective spirits of the dead to inspire the collective living to carry forth that torch of freedom and equality.

And so, on this 248^th birthday of our country, let us also pause to remember the sacrifices that were at once both deeply personal, yet profoundly collective. And, from both the named and the nameless, may we take up the solemn responsibility as torchbearers of equality and freedom, and may we continue to find meaning in the reason why they died. And may we long remember the equality of their shared sacrifice.

Rest indeed, patriot spirits, rest.​