Are you thankful for your Freedom?

There are so many brave men and woman that have fought and are fighting for our way of life.  I have always loved 4th of July but never been a huge history buff.  Then I met the hub's...a MAJOR history buff!  I joke with him all the time about how he missed his calling and should have been a history teacher.  Then I think about his patience and ...well we are getting off subject but God knew what he was doing when he led Lee to banking.  HA!  I have become much more fond and even able to quote many significant events in American history since becoming Mrs. History Buff.  I have taken a particular interest in American History as a whole, imagine that, and love learning more and more about the great nation we enjoy living in.  I have become completely aggravated with those who want to take away our liberties or try to dictate the way in which we live.  So it is only fitting an proper to remind you of a significant historical even that took place today on such sacred land...Enjoy and remember this is a month to be thankful for your blessings.  I'd say that our freedom is a pretty important thing to be thankful for.  Take a few minutes to read this speech and thank a Veteran today.

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 so 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 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.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863