PEORIA MAGAZINE May 2023

COMMENTARY

The Soldiers and Sailors war monument at the Peoria County Courthouse

LET US SALUTE LEO, STU, BOB AND SO MANY MORE On Memorial Day and every day, may we honor those military veterans who risked their lives so that ‘this nation might live’

A braham Lincoln never planned it, but his Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863 was the foundation for America’s first Memorial Day. Lincoln’s two-minute speech embodies the fundamental principles underlying the reasons that men and women sacrifice their lives for the security and well-being of the nation. ‘WE JUST DID WHAT WE HAD TO DO AND RETURNED HOME TO LIVE OUR LIVES’ — Congressman Bob Michel Lincoln had thought long and hard about the immense loss of life at the battle of Gettysburg from July 1-3 of that year. He tried to make sense of those 51,000 deaths, of Americans killing Americans for different purposes. (Vietnam totaled 58,209 casualties). In the end, those Civil War deaths, some

620,000, would exceed the sum of all other major wars involving this nation from 1775 to today. Why do we risk the lives of our family members and fellow citizens in war? As Lincoln saw it, it is because “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A great Civil War would test that “proposition” as to whether this “nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” America’s founding beliefs, fixed and immutable, were precise and concise: “All men are created equal … and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” This is our national vision. And it’s why we have a Memorial Day to honor those who “gave their lives that this nation might live” and “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

BY JOHN F. GILLIGAN PHOTOS BY RON JOHNSON

96 MAY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE