Gettysburg ~ Bloody Epic Union Victory @ 150...

150 years ago today the Union forces won the Battle of Gettysburg, which Lincoln later immortalized in his commemorative Address...

"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 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 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."

Check out interactomap (tnx MissC for spotting)... And here's map of the larger campaign...

Tube @ 150 ~ London Underground Anniversary

150 years ago today, the London Underground opened to the public!

Emancipation Proclamation ~ US Freedom @ 150

Exactly 150 years ago today -- January 1st 1863 -- President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slaves in Confederate (rebel) territory free. It was by no means the end of all slavery and certainly not of discrimination, but nevertheless this was an epic turn of events!  It would take decades more overcoming Jim Crow laws, striving for access, and fighting for civil rights to achieve a real measure of equality, but this event was a transformational cusp. Writes Janell Ross in HuffPost...

"Lincoln was not the lone force behind emancipation but rather an essential part of a coalition of outspoken abolitionists that included free blacks and whites, said Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and one of the curators of the Smithsonian’s 150th Emancipation Proclamation anniversary exhibit.  [...] "When you understand that freedom was a process, not a moment, then you can allow yourself to wonder what work is left for us in the next 100 years."

There's more work to be done, but at least we can see the artifacts of emancipation at the Smithsonian!