This is my first, ever, diary here (or anywhere). I'm technically challenged, so I hope I'm following all the guidelines and rules and what-not, and doing this right. I was motivated to write, by the realization that Kossacks have a connection to Lincoln's Gettysburg address.
You see, in high school, I read the Gettysburg address like everyone else, but —also like everybody else or many of us at that time and age—, I never really cared about it or understood the significance of it. Well, I re-read it recently and did I finally took the time to analyze it and consider its historical significance. Now, it seems clear to me that we Kossacks are, in fact, "Gettysburg militants".
Here's why. First, climb into my time machine:
In 1776, the United States was founded. We were a brand new country which was —as Abraham Lincoln said—"conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". (Lincoln, who'd signed the Emancipation Proclamation just ten months previous to speaking those words, must surely have understood their irony!)
Just eighty-seven years after our founding, a civil war broke out, basically over slavery. For a country so young that it was still toddling and teething in many ways, the outcome of the Civil War would serve as a real test to show whether a country based on such noble ideals could even last very long.
One of the most horrific battles of the Civil War was fought in July, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 8000 died. So many that they couldn't be buried fast enough or correctly, so —in order to give these soldiers the honor and respect they deserved— money was raised to turn a part of the Gettysburg battlefield into a national cemetery for those who died for the effort to keep the country together. President Lincoln went to speak at its dedication in November, 1863 (it was completed nine years later).
In his speech, he (wrongly!) predicted that no-one would actually remember his or any other speech made there that day, but that people would, instead, always remember the sacrifices made by those who died there. He said that one couldn't actually "dedicate" or "consecrate" the ground in which the soldiers were buried, because they'd already done that themselves, by the very fact that they had died fighting to keep the country together.
According to Lincoln, what should be "dedicated"—as in the sense of being committed to something— were the living, not the dead. Dedicated to carrying on "the unfinished work" begun by those who had fallen, so they would not have died in vain.
Here are Lincoln's actual words: "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."
Fast forward to today.
It's funny, but —in light of the current social context— those words are suddenly more apt and pertinent than ever, aren't they? I don't know what purpose it would serve, today, to spout, "Remember the Alamo!", but —in the spirit of what Lincoln proposed, I sure can see that "Remember Gettysburg!" is valid. After the call to action from Lincoln, seven score and twelve years ago, it's clear that the work isn't over yet ... except today, I don't see things in terms of, "North" vs "South", but rather, "reasonable" vs "irrational".
That's part of why I'm a Kossack.