For 13 years, my father has been asking me to visit Gettysburg with him.

He is, without a doubt, a bonafide Civil War buff. He has dozens of books, several PBS mini-series, maps, and many, many, many stories about the war that nearly destroyed our nation.

I am not sure why I have not yet made that journey with him. I know that the idea of walking about a battlefield with him and my stepmother was not the most appealing to me when I was living in Pennsylvania and we could have easily met up there. Once I moved here, the drive was longer and still not that appealing. In recent years, knowing that trip would involve a lot of walking was the most prohibitive factor. But now, when it would truly be a difficult journey for me, I believe time was running out.

My father's mind is fading far, far too quickly.

So, when I discovered that I would have Veterans day off from work, I decided to take a comp day on Monday to extend the weekend and called my father to see if he was interested in making a day trip to Gettysburg.

Riding in the car was near torture for me. Dad was so very nervous, each time a car came close to ours and was extremely agitated over not recognizing the way Magellan navigated us to the battlefield. Each time he cried out a warning to me, I wanted to tell him to just shut up until we got there. Over and over and over again, I had to bite my tongue. It is no use getting angry with my father. His fears and worries are not under his control.

Neither are his tears.

Standing on the top of Signal Hill, he asked me to recite the Gettysburg Address. I am surprised that he remembered that I know it, even though I am wont to start reciting it at the drop of a hat. I find the speech so incredibly honest and simple and yet such a wonderful bit of writing.

I knew that the words would bring tears to his eyes. Most anything that sparks emotion for him spills over onto his cheeks. But I recited anyway. By the time I was done, I had garnered a bit of an audience.

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.

More than a century later, Gettysburg is still a powerful reminder of the consequence of war. The Confederate soldiers hiding in Devil's den and picking off the Northern troops on Signal Hill thought they were doing what was absolutely necessary to preserve their country. So did those who spilled their blood protecting that valuable spot overlooking the battlefield to have the best chance to defeat the Confederates.

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address covers the complexity of the Civil War so beautifully...

My Fellow Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.