Battle for Atlantis

CHAPTER ONE

“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.” The tall man with the dark beard and lined face paused and looked out over the crowd that listened to his speech. Soldiers, politicians, locals. And the dead. Acres and acres of dead in the cemetery he had come to dedicate. He felt the presence of the dead more than he did the living. He also sensed another presence. One he had known all his adult life.

He was in southern Pennsylvania, in a small town that few had heard of before the great battle of the previous summer that had taken place in and around this place called Gettysburg. It was just past mid-November and the trees were bare of their leaves, making the terrain much different from what it must have looked like in July when the great armies clashed here.

Lincoln continued. “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.”

Almost fifty thousand men had been killed or wounded or were missing from the three days of battle. It was a number that had staggered a nation that had seen large numbers of casualties reported before. Many of the Union and Confederate dead still lay in their shallow battlefield graves and if one penetrated far enough into the surrounding woods, they would find those who had not even been buried, the bodies picked clean by scavengers, leaving skulls and bones to trip up the unwary.

There was an air about the place. It was more than hallowed ground. It was as if the battle still resonated in the very soil. Lincoln had walked most of the battlefield the previous day upon arrival. Visiting places that were already becoming legend: Little and Big Round Tops; the Peach Orchard; Culp’s Hill; Seminary Ridge; and, most important, Cemetery Ridge and the long open field leading up to it. Mary had refused to come with him to the last place, and he had become ill shortly after walking along place, and he had become ill shortly after walking along the stone wall on top of the ridge, peering out to the west the stone wall on top of the ridge, peering out to the west great battle.

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot. Consecrate — we cannot 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 living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

A slight breeze blew across the gathered crowd, and Lincoln felt a chill on his skin. He had made so many decisions in the past few years and so many people had died as a result of those decisions. And he knew there were more decisions to come. There was to be a final reckoning for which this was but a prelude. So he had been told.

“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 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.”

Abraham Lincoln glanced down at the notes he had made on the way to Gettysburg from Washington and which he had honed the previous night in the local house at which he had stayed. There was another paragraph, one he had scribbled on the carriage ride from that house to this spot. One that he had spent many restless nights tossing and turning over, debating whether he even dare write it, never mind utter it. Mary, dear Mary, had told him not to. Had told him that the Truth was best left unsaid. That the apparent sacrifices that had been made were enough for people to know. That knowing more would be dangerous.

There was no applause as Lincoln stopped talking. The speaker before him, Edward Everett, has spoken for over two hours, eulogizing those who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg this past summer. Lincoln had just spoken only two hundred and seventy-two words in less than two minutes. There were many in the crowd who hadn’t yet realized he’d begun speaking, never mind stopped. It didn’t matter. The dead had heard.

President Lincoln looked out over the audience. At the right edge of the crowd he saw his wife’s familiar face. He turned away, and then looked back and she was still there, peering at him intently, the face hidden beneath a black, broad-brimmed hat. The head bobbed slightly, as if indicating approval, and Lincoln shivered once more for several moments, despite the Indian summer warmness of the day. There were prices to be paid beyond that taken in battle. He took the envelope on which he had written the last paragraph, folded it in half and slid it inside a pocket on the inside of his long coat.

“God help us,” Lincoln whispered to himself as he left the speaking podium. “God help all the worlds. We have done our part.”

He made his way through the crowd shaking hands, edging his way closer to his wife. When he reached her, he looked into her dark eyes. She held his gaze.

“Mary,” Lincoln said. Lincoln leaned his tall form toward her, like an old oak blown by a strong wind until his head was next to hers. “Did it work? Was it worth all the death?”

“I don’t know yet. 1 am still waiting for the Voice to tell me.”

N months,” Lincoln argued, a refrain that had been going between them ever since the great battle.

“Time in this war doesn’t work like that.”

Lincoln knew his wife wasn’t referring to the War between the States. It had taken him a long time to accept that there was something at stake larger than even the Union.

Mary Todd Lincoln put a hand on his ann. “I promise, I will let you know. As soon as I hear it.”