The Dept. of Nebraska and the Dakotas Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1st Nebraska Infantry re-enactors and public gathered for a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Abraham Lincoln statue on the grounds of the Nebraska State capitol on November 22, 2025. Department Commander Keith Rockefeller opened the Remembrance ceremony observing the anniversary of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Following was the presentation of the national flag and pledge of allegiance and singing of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. PDC Michael Ponte gave the invocation followed by remarks by Commander Rockefeller. PCC Eric Bachenburg recited the Gettysburg Address. Next, the keynote speaker was PDC Mark Nichols who gave the following speech.
Keynote Address by PDC Mark Nichols
As we gather here at this statue of Abraham Lincoln, in front of the Nebraska State Capitol, we join generations of Americans who have paused to remember a short speech on a cold November day in 1863.
The length of the Gettysburg Address is only 272 words. It took Lincoln about three minutes to deliver. Many people in the crowd barely realized he had begun before he was finished.
And yet, to this day, we are still gathering, still listening, still learning from what he has said.
We often say that Lincoln “gave” the Gettysburg Address—as if it was a kind of gift—and in many ways, it was. But he could give those words only after thousands of soldiers had already given everything they had.
Their courage, their suffering, and their sacrifice are the soil from which Lincoln’s words grew.
But we stand here in Nebraska, far from that Pennsylvania battlefield, to remember not just his famous speech but to pay tribute to those who fought and died on that battlefield, to the veterans who have carried our flag through later wars, and to the ongoing promise of freedom and equality that Lincoln called on us to continue.
When Lincoln came to Gettysburg in November 1863, it had been more than two years since the Civil War begun. The nation was exhausted. The future was far from certain. Whether or not a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could survive was very much in question.
Only a few months before, the peaceful farming town of Gettysburg had become a battlefield. For three days, Union and Confederate soldiers clashed in wheat fields and orchards, over rocky hills and along stone walls. When the battle finally ended, over 50,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing.
Families would wait for letters that would never come. Towns would mourn the empty chairs around their tables. It was hard to comprehend the magnitude of loss.
It was to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead that President Lincoln journeyed to Gettysburg.
He was not the main speaker for that day. That honor fell to Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators of that era. Everett spoke for nearly two hours, painting the battlefield in words, tracing the history of the conflict, explaining the stakes.
Then Lincoln stood up.
He did not go into detail about the battle.
He did not include statistics.
He did not attack his opponents.
Instead, he reached for something deeper: the meaning of the nation itself.
He began with the phrase we all know: “Four score and seven years ago…” In just a few words, he reached back past the Constitution, back past the compromises that allowed slavery, to the Declaration of Independence-the bold statement that “all men are created equal.”
By doing so, Lincoln reminded his listeners that the true birth of the nation was not just the creation of a government, but the declaration of a principle.
The Constitution informed us how we would govern.
The Declaration provided the reason for our existence.
Standing among the fresh graves of Gettysburg, Lincoln said that this “nation, so conceived and so dedicated,” was being tested—tested to see whether any nation based on liberty and equality could long endure.
He stood in a cemetery for the dead but he spoke about the living experiment of democracy.
One of the most powerful parts of the Gettysburg Address is what Lincoln refuses to claim for himself.
He tells the crowd that, in a sense, they cannot “dedicate,” “consecrate,” or “hallow” the ground—because the brave men who struggled there have already done that, far beyond our poor power to add or detract.
He says the real honor doesn’t come from speeches or ceremonies, important as those are. It comes from what the living choose to do next.
And then he shifts our focus from the platform to our own lives. “It is for us the living,” he declares, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
“The unfinished work.”
That’s a phrase that reaches across the years to us here in Nebraska today—families, children, veterans, public servants, neighbors gathered under Lincoln’s gaze.
Because the work of building a more just, more free, more equal country was not finished in 1863. It was not finished at Appomattox in 1865. It was not finished when slavery was abolished, or when women gained the right to vote, or when segregation ended.
It is not finished today.
This remains the responsibility passed on to every generation of American citizens: how we choose to exercise our freedom for which others fought and died to secure.
It’s simple to stand so far apart from the 1860s, to imagine that the people from Lincoln’s day were somehow different from us, made of hardier material, confronted with clearer choices and simpler solutions.
They too were human beings, no different from us—frightened, hopeful, divided, weary of bad news, unsure how long the war would continue, and uncertain whether their sacrifices would achieve success.
Likewise, we are living in a period of tension and division. The issues we argue about may be different, but the temperature can feel just as hot. We worry about whether our institutions can hold, whether truth still matters, whether we can still find common ground.
It is in moments such as these that one begins to experience the Gettysburg Address not only as something housed within a museum but a letter addressed to ourselves.
Lincoln asks:
What does it mean to be “conceived in Liberty”?
What does it mean to be “dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal”?
What does it mean to say that a government is “of the people, by the people, for the people”?
Those aren’t just lines of verse. That is a mission statement.
What, then do we owe to those individuals who wore our country’s uniform – those individuals who fought at Gettysburg, and those who have fought in the wars since, and the veterans standing among us today?
Lincoln’s response is easy to give but difficult to live.
We owe them a deeper devotion to the cause of freedom and equality.
We owe them the determination that “these dead shall not have died in vain.”
That doesn’t only happen on the battlefield; that happens in everyday life, in small but real ways.
It looks like the choice of honesty over convenient falsehoods, even when the truth might be uncomfortable.
It means treating our fellow citizens as neighbors rather than enemies, even when they vote differently, speak differently, or practice their faith differently than we do.
It takes seriously an idea that all people are created equal, not as a mantra to be invoked, but as a guiding standard for how we treat one another, and how we build our schools, our communities, and our systems of justice.
It looks like showing up: voting, serving, volunteering, helping a neighbor, mentoring a child, listening more carefully, and speaking more respectfully.
The soldiers who fell at Gettysburg did extraordinary things in an extraordinary time. We honor them by doing faithful things in our time—even when those things seem ordinary.
One of the ways in which the Gettysburg Address continues to affect and inspire us is that it does not portray America as a finished masterpiece, but as a work in progress.
Lincoln speaks about a “new birth of freedom.” Those words admit that the first birth was incomplete. The promise of liberty and equality had been compromised by slavery and injustice. A new birth was needed—brought forth through sacrifice and struggle.
Today, we continue to live with the consequences of that history. Today, we are still learning what equality really means in practice. Today, we are still struggling to figure out how to ensure that “of the people” truly includes all the people.
This can be discouraging, since it reminds us how far we still have to go.
But it can also be encouraging—because it means that what we do matters.
Here in our own state of Nebraska, in our neighborhoods, schools, farms, businesses, and homes, we are now writing the next chapter in the story Lincoln once described. Perhaps we won’t be famous. Perhaps our names won’t appear in history books. Yet our acts—our courage, our kindness, our willingness to stand for what is right—these are the things which shape the character of our nation.
Sometimes the challenges we are confronted with, both domestically and internationally, appear so great that it is tempting to feel small, or even powerless.
But when Lincoln said, “It is for us the living,” he did not say, “It is for the experts,” or “It is for the people in Washington,” or “It is for someone else.”
He said it is for us.
Each of us has our own circle of influence: a family, classroom, workplace, team, congregation or community. In those spaces, we can bring a little more honesty, a little more courage, and a lot of compassion into our environments.
We can resist surrendering to cynicism. Cynicism is the easy choice; it asks nothing of us except a shrug. Hope is harder. Hope asks us to act as though our efforts count, even when we cannot see the outcome.
The soldiers at Gettysburg did not know how the war would end. They did not know if their Union would survive. They did not know if future generations would honor their sacrifice.
They acted with courage anyway.
We are called to show courage in our own way—to live as if the experiment of self-government is worth the struggle; to live as if the ideals of liberty and equality are worth the effort, our energy, and sometimes our comfort.
As we stand here in the shadow of this Capitol where Nebraskans govern themselves, and under the gaze of this statue honoring Abraham Lincoln, we are reminded of something important: democracy is not a spectator sport.
It is a trust, passed on from generation to generation.
Those who fought at Gettysburg carried that trust and passed it on to their successors. It stayed with our veterans as they carried it through the trenches and across oceans. It stayed with our warriors in the skies and deserts and mountains of later wars. This responsibility has passed to our generation. It falls to us, to our children present here today, to our parents and our grandparents, to our elected leaders, and to our citizens.
The question is not whether the work is finished. It isn’t.
The question is whether we will do our part.
Will we, in Lincoln’s words, be “highly resolved” that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom?
Will we be the guardians of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, so that it does not perish from the earth?
We have heard the Gettysburg Address read, so I invite you to reflect on these questions.
Were you able to hear the sorrow behind the words, the realization that so many lives were cut short and families forever changed?
Do you hear the gratitude, the recognition that we are the inheritors of sacrifices that we did not make.
And did you hear the challenge, the call to be in, our own day, worthy of what we have received. May we leave this place with renewed devotion: Devotion to the memory of those who fought and died at Gettysburg. Devotion to the veterans among us today, and to those who will serve tomorrow. Devotion to the truth that all are created equal. And devotion to the unfinished work of building a more just and generous nation. When we do that, the spirit of Lincoln’s words, spoken so long ago on a distant battlefield, will continue to live on – on our Capitol steps, in our state, and in our country that we love.
The event concluded with singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, closing remarks by Commander Rockefeller and benediction by PDC Ponte.