I find it amazing how history is woven so tightly, despite the expanse of generations and time.

Take, for example, two presidents of the United States, both said to be great, both taken too early.

Last week, the nation marked two anniversaries: The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and the first reading of the Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, two years before he, too, would be shot and killed while in office.

One hundred years separated the two men, yet striking connections (similar names of staff, the dates they served in office, being “war” presidents, and their fight for equality of the races) exist.

Though I could go on for pages about both men, it is the power of the Gettysburg Address that I am drawn to.

The stage was set in Gettysburg some 145 years ago. The Civil War was trudging on as the Army of the Potomac began the pursuit of the Confederate Army of Virginia back into the south following the battle of Gettysburg.

For months after the southern collapse at the battle, the residents of the sleepy Pennsylvania town faced burying bodies, horses and rebuilding their lives.

A massive cemetery was created, and locals and federal officials felt that national consecration was necessary.

Therefore, Mr. Lincoln traveled by train northward to Gettysburg to lend his words to the ceremonies.

He arrived to hear speeches which lasted for hours on end. Though he was somewhat popular and known for his oration, Lincoln was equally being panned by Unionists looking for an end to the war, and hated by the south.

At the anointed hour, Lincoln stepped to the podium, and delivered his 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 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.”

Two-hundred-seventy two words, less than three minutes of a speech. He didn’t even get applause. Some people and newspapers said it was terrible, disrespectful.

But, more than 100 years later, those words ring out as perhaps the greatest speech ever delivered in the United States, and perhaps the world. It doesn’t take many words to touch the heart.

There is great truth in saying that the dead of war or of the cause never die in vain, and that the words and actions of the living cannot fully represent the ultimate sacrifice.

I think of all the great “battles” after Gettysburg. First, the conclusion of the Civil War, which claimed the lives of too many Maine men in the process (the state had the highest deaths per capita of any in the Union). I think of the greatest generation, as it is called, that propelled us through two world wars.

I also think of the civil rights movement, the men and women who, believing that a nation, under God, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, were willing to be pounded by water from fire hoses, beaten with clubs, attacked by dogs and, in some cases, killed outright. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died fighting for equal rights, representation, pay and believing that the nation would not perish from the face of the earth.

Substitute the hallowed ground and the great struggle in front of us, and the Gettysburg Address applies perfectly.

Our new leaders also face the prospect of a great battle, the attempt to cure the ills of the nation and improve its standing in the world. It is the fundamental prospect that our nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the protection, betterment and empowerment of mankind, will succeed.

I just hope that others draw as much strength from a short speech made by a president long since gone. Hope is all one can draw when one believes our nation won’t perish from this earth, despite the mortal challenges we face.

Drew McMullin is publisher of the Journal Tribune in Biddeford, and is president of the Maine Press Association and the Maine Daily Newspaper Publishers Association.