Civil war tore this country apart. But two mens words still unite us, more than 160 years later

Three American presidents died on the Fourth of July.John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both let go on the same day in 1826; James Monroe followed in 1831.

We tell that story as a star-spangled coincidence — proof the date itself is somehow charged.But the two men who taught us the hardest lesson about the Fourth did not die on that day.“Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men … [and] the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.Read its preamble, consider its purposes,” the great Frederick Douglass told an Independence Day gathering in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852, in the years before the bloodiest war in our history.And yet, his eyes likely were moist with frustration, pain and anger at the America he witnessed.“I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us.

I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common … You may rejoice, I must mourn … Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!” Those words from the most photographed man of the 19th century echo the tempered reflections of the era’s most famous American.“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,” President Abraham Lincoln noted in 1863, from the hallowed ground of Gettysburg.

His speech commemorated the Battle of Gettysburg, which culminated in Gen.Robert E.

Lee’s July 4th retreat from Union forces after more than 45,000 casualties were sustained during this battle.“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 ...