书城外语美国公民读本(彩色英文版+中文翻译阅读)
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第42章 法律是怎样执行的(4)

19.A second president to be murdered,and the fourth to die while in office,was James A.Garfield.Mr.Garfield was inaugurated as president in March,1881.A few months after wards he was shot by a halfcrazy officeseeker.The president lingered for some weeks,As soon a s he died,the v i ce p r e s i d e n t ,C h e s te r A.Arthur,of New York,took the oath of office aspresident.THE GRANT MONUMENT AS IT NOW APPEARS20.Thus four times in our history a president has died,twice,sad to say,by the hand of an assassin.So four times a vicepresident has become president.

21.If the president and vicepresident should both die,the laws provide that the secretary of state should succeed to the office.If he also should die,the secretary of the treasury acts as president,and thus the office would pass on through the president’s cabinet in case of successive deaths.

22.The Battle of Gettysburg.One of the greatest battles of the civil war was that at Gettysburg,i n t h e s t a te o f Pe n n s y l v a n i a ,in July,1863.The Confederate army,commanded by Genera1Robert E.Lee,had crossed the Potomac River and was invading the northern states.The Union army,under General George G.Meade,followed close after,and at Gettysburg Lee turned on his enemy and attempted to destroy him.The battle raged fiercely forROBERT E.LEEGeneral Lee was born in Virginia in 1807.He was an officer in the United States army,but when Virginia seceded he resigned his commission and cast in his fortunes with his native state and the South.Through most of the civil war he commanded the Confederate armies,winning high fame as an able general and as a man of pure and earnest character.After the war he became president of Washington College,at Lexington,Virginia.Here he died in 1870.

three days,being fought on both sides with determined courage.The Confederates failed in their attack,and were compelled to retreat to Virginia.The many thousands of Union soldiers who were killed were buried in a national cemetery on the field of battle,and in November,1863,this cemetery was formally dedicated to its sacred purpose.A part of the ceremonies was an address by the president of the United States,Abraham Lincoln.This brief but most eloquent speech of the great war president follows ill full:

Lincoln‘s Gettysburg Address,November 19,1863FOURSCORE 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 battlefield 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 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 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,and for the people,shall not perish from the earth.

UNITED STATES SAILORS.