November 19, 1863: The Gettysburg Address
You are there: In his most powerful speech ever, Lincoln argues that the meaning of the war extends beyond restoring the Union to a shared belief that all men are created equal and fulfillment of the promise in his January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves.
After the pivotal battlefield victories of 1863 on July 3 at Gettysburg and July 4 at Vicksburg, the Fall brings a pause in the fighting, save around Chattanooga. During this lull, the President decides to publically address those who are calling for peace negotiations and an end to the bloodshed.
He seizes his chance after receiving an invitation to attend the dedication of a memorial cemetery in Gettysburg to honor those who died there. David Wills, head of the Cemetery Commission, invites him to make “a few appropriate remarks” after the main address is delivered by the nation’s leading orator, Edward Everett.
Everett is fifteen year senior to Lincoln at sixty-nine and has enjoyed a storied career. Trained as a Unitarian Minister, he has served as a Whig in the House (1825-35), Massachusetts Governor (1836-40) Ambassador to Britain (1841-45), President of Harvard (1846-48), Secretary of State (1852-3) and U.S. Senator (1853-4). In the run-up to the war, Everett is chosen as Vice-President on the Constitutional Unionist Party ticket running against Lincoln.
Lincoln expects Everett to call for immediate peace talks and the restoration of the Union as it was in 1860, including slavery in the South. The President intends to oppose both proposals in his remarks.
On November 18, with his address half written, he leaves for Gettysburg despite pleas from his wife Mary to stay home with their sick son, Tad. He is accompanied by several others, including Secretary of State Seward and his bodyguard, Ward Lamon. Arriving around 5:00pm, he is met by Wills and Everett, and heads off to a series of welcoming events that evening.
The next morning he finishes his remarks, rejoins Wills, and around 10:00 mounts his horse and rides in a procession to the cemetery. The ceremony drags on after a lengthy benediction, followed by Everett’s two hour oration, delivered from memory. He recounts the July battle itself based on input from General Meade, compares it to the Persians vs. Greeks at Marathon, and goes on to describe how peace was restored after the War of the Roses and the Thirty Year’s Wars. And peace is what Everett calls for in the current conflict. .
It is now Lincoln’s turn, and, after shaking hands with Everett, a ceremonial hymn is played and Ward Lamon offers an introduction. As the President reaches the podium, his audience has been standing for four hours around the speaker’s platform and many are restless.
By the time they settle down, the 272 word address is over – with witnesses reporting that relatively few even hear what Lincoln has to say in his characteristic Kentucky twang.
The President is disappointed with his performance, comparing the effort to a dull plow blade that fails to cultivate the ground: “Lamon, that speech won’t scour.” He has failed to speak the expected: the battle scenes or the Union generals or even the cemetery itself. Instead he has turned philosophical.
But his feeling of failure is short-lived once the leading newspapers print the full address.
It is Lincoln at his most eloquent, making his case before a jury of common men, in short words and phrases, relying on rhetorical devices throughout: rhyming (“fourscore”), repetition (“we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground”), humility (“the world will little note”), imagery of life (“a new birth”) and mortality (the “living and the dead”).
Instead of peace talks, he pleads for “devotion” and endurance to finish up “the great task before us…to insure that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” The current fight must go on for now.
Then the promise, harkening back to the vision “our fathers brought forth on the continent.” A “new birth of freedom,” a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and “dedicated to the (Declaration of Independence) proposition that all men are created equal.”
Everett’s written note to Lincoln sums up the historical success of the Gettysburg Address: “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
The Gettysburg Address
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.
