Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)

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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.

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.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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 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, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863


His conviction that we are one nation, indivisible, “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” led to the rebirth of a union free of slavery. And he expressed this conviction in a language of enduring clarity and beauty, exhibiting a literary genius to match his political genius.

By Doris Kearns Goodwin,“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”,p. 749
Lincoln had translated the story of his country and the meaning of the war into words and ideas accessible to every American. The child who would sleeplessly rework his father’s yarns into tales comprehensible to any boy had forged for his country an ideal of its past, present, and future that would be recited and memorized by students forever.

By Doris Kearns Goodwin,“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”


With characteristic modesty, he sincerely felt that the world would “little note nor long remember” what he said there, but that it would never forget what the brave men who died had done there. How surprised he would be if he should come back to life now and realize that the speech of his that most people remember is the one that didn’t “scour” at Gettysburg! How amazed he would be to discover that the ten immortal sentences he spoke there will probably be cherished as one of the literary glories and treasures of earth centuries hence, long after the Civil War is all but forgotten.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is more than a speech. It is the divine expression of a rare soul exalted and made great by suffering. It is an unconscious prose poem, and has all the majestic beauty and profound roll of epic lines.

By Dale Carnegie,“Lincoln, the Unknown” ,Carnegie-167-28.


The words seemed to make little impression. Even among the masters of language the chorus of approval was reserved for Everett. But the latter wrote to the President, saying that his own long speech had been put in the shade by Lincoln’s pithy words.
And what Lincoln, with honest conviction, had denied, did after all happen. The name of Gettysburg is merely the name of one among numberless battles, of which few in Europe have ever heard or troubled to remember which side was victorious ; and even in the United States it would have become a mere fact among others taught to children in schools but for these few words uttered by a man in civilian attire, dying away down the wind when they were spoken, that have made the name immortal, showing once again that Homer can be productive without Achilles, but that Achilles cannot win immortality without Homer.

By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” , Ludwig-416-17


The President rises slowly

The Baltimore Glee Club sang an ode written for the occasion by Benjamin B. French. Having read Everett’s address, Lincoln knew when the moment drew near for him to speak. He took out his own manuscript from a coat pocket, put on his steel-bowed glasses, stirred in his chair, looked over the manuscript, and put it back in his pocket. The Baltimore Glee Club finished. Ward Hill Lamon rose and spoke the words “The President of the United States,” who rose, and holding in one hand the two sheets of paper at which he occasionally glanced, delivered the address in his high-pitched and clear-carrying voice. The Cincinnati Commercial reporter wrote, “The President rises slowly, draws from his pocket a paper, and, when commotion subsides, in a sharp, unmusical treble voice, reads the brief and pithy remarks.” He wrote in his diary, “The President, in a firm, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half dozen words of consecration.” Charles Hale of the Boston Advertiser, also officially representing Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, had notebook and pencil in hand, took down the slow-spoken words of the President.

Sandburg-306-32-32

As Everett started back to his seat, Lincoln stood to clasp his hand and warmly congratulate him. George Gitt, a fifteen-year-old who had stationed himself beneath the speaker’s stand, later remembered that the “flutter and motion of the crowd ceased the moment the President was on his feet. Such was the quiet that his footfalls, I remember very distinctly, woke echoes, and with the creaking of the boards, it was as if some one were walking through the hallways of an empty house.”
Lincoln put on his steel-rimmed spectacles and glanced down at his pages. Though he had had but a brief time to prepare the address, he had devoted intense thought to his chosen theme for nearly a decade. As Garry Wills observes in his classic study of the address: “He had spent a good part of the 1850s repeatedly relating all the most sensitive issues of the day to the Declaration’s supreme principle.” During the debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln had frequently reminded his audiences of the far-reaching promises contained in the Declaration of Independence. Someday, he said, “all this quibbling about…this race and that race and the other race being inferior” would be eliminated, giving truth to the phrase “all men are created equal.”
Twenty months before the Emancipation Proclamation, the president had told Hay that “the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity,” predicting that “if we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.” Now tens of thousands had died in pursuit of that purpose. At Gettysburg, he would express that same conviction in far more concise and eloquent terms.“Four score and seven years ago,” he began, our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Goodwin-573-389-053

As the procession started, he sat erect at first; but presently his body slouched forward in the saddle; his head fell on his chest, and his long arms hung limp at his sides. … He was lost in thought, going over his little speech, giving it “another lick.” . . . Edward Everett, the selected orator of the occasion, made two mistakes at Gettysburg. Both bad-and both uncalled for. First, he arrived an hour late; and, secondly, he spoke for two hours.Lincoln had read Everett’s oration and when he saw that the speaker was nearing his close, he knew his time was coming, and he honestly felt that he wasn’t adequately prepared; so he grew nervous, twisted in his chair, drew his manuscript from the pocket of his Prince Albert coat, put on his old-fashioned glasses, and quickly refreshed his memory.
Presently he stepped forward, manuscript in hand, and delivered his little address in two minutes. Did his audience realize, that soft November afternoon, that they were listening to the greatest speech that had ever fallen from human lips up to that time? No, most of his hearers were merely curious: they had never seen nor heard a President of the United States, they strained their necks to look at Lincoln, and were surprised to discover that such a tall man had such a high, thin voice, and that he spoke with a Southern accent. They had forgotten that he was born a Kentuckian and that he had retained the intonation of his native State; and about the time they felt he was getting through with his introduction and ready to launch into his speech-he sat down.

Carnegie-167-26

Only at considerable intervals, now, has he still time to give himself up lovingly to the careful elaboration of a speech, and this is one of the ways in which he finds relaxation. Here the poet in him is seeking an outlet, in conjunction with the natural desire to express in words the feelings of his big family. Apart from the inaugural address, and the proclamation, Lincoln probably never took more pains in the preparation of a brief speech than he did over the wording of the address he made at the consecration of a cemetery in Gettysburg. In the open air, there had spoken before him, to an audience of many thousands, the most famous orator in the country, the handsome and highly respected Everett, whose method was classical. Then, amid the general tension, the President mounted the rostrum, took a document out of his coat pocket, selected one sheet from it, put on his glasses with an un- ceremonious gesture, and, in his high tenor voice, read aloud a few sentences, making too quick a job of it to give the photographers stationed in front of him time to do their work. He said :

Ludwig-416-14

One thought on “Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)

    Words : Genius « Abraham Lincoln said:
    December 4, 2015 at 12:26

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