The Gettysbeer Address

(This was originally written as an oratory to be given at the Gitchee Gumee Brewfest in April 2004.)

Four Score and seven beers ago, my companions and I brought themselves forth on this continent a brew nation, conceived in innebrity and dedicated to the proposition that not all beers are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil debate, testing which of these fine brews’ inebriation so conceived and so delicious can long endure.  We are met in the great Brewhouse of that debate.  We have come to dedicate a portion of this drink as a tribute to those who here gave us the means that this event might long 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 drink.  The brave men living and dead who have perfected and brewed it have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract.  The world will little note nor long remember what we drank here, but we can never forget that we came here to sip and sup with our fellow men.  It is for us the drunkards rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished ales, which were poured out for us, have thus far been so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored men we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these beers shall not have been drank in vain, that this brew fest shall have a new birth of drunkenness and that the beer of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.