The Morgantown Address

Tummysticks last post inspired me to pen the following. Partial credit must be given to Abe Lincoln.

Four score and eight months ago, our AD brought forth for this program a new nation, conceived in bubble-screens, and dedicated to the proposition that all Mountaineers should have red and green wristbands.

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 legal battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, to Mylan Puskar, and to the love of Mountaineer athletics and Mylan’s money. 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, both free and those occassionally imprisoned or suspended , who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what Coach Dick Rod said or claims, but it can never forget what glory the West Virginia Mountaineers attained here. It is for us the proud West Virginia fans, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who played 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 athletes, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these players shall not have played in vain—that this nation, under Bill Stewart, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that football of the Mountaineers, by the Mountaineers, for the Mountaineers, shall not perish from Morgantown, but win Championships for us all.