On this Day 1863

[Devil Doc]

It was on this day in 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln got up in front of about 15,000 people seated at a new national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and delivered the Gettysburg Address.

The men killed in the battle had been buried hastily in shallow graves with haphazard wooden markers, but in the months since the battle, a man named David Wills oversaw the task of identifying and burying the dead properly. There would be a ceremony to dedicate the new cemetery, and Wills invited the most popular poets of the day to write something in honor of the occasion they all declined. So David Wills invited Edward Everett, a well-known speaker who was famous for his speeches about battlefields.

It was almost as an afterthought that Wills decided to invite President Lincoln to the ceremony, and Lincoln chose to attend the ceremony even though his wife begged him not to. One of their sons was sick, and they had recently lost another son to illness. But Lincoln thought the event was too important to miss. It would give him a chance to clarify the reasons for continuing to fight the war, even as it continued to claim tens of thousands of lives.

No one is sure exactly when Lincoln wrote his speech. Most people who knew him said that he spent a great deal of time writing every public statement he ever made, so he probably composed the first draft in Washington D.C. Witnesses said they saw him working on the speech on the train ride to Pennsylvania, and others said that they saw him working in his room the night before the event."

It was a foggy, cold morning on this day in 1863. Lincoln arrived about 10 a.m. Around noon the sun broke out as the crowds gathered on a hill overlooking the battlefield. A military band played, a local preacher offered a long prayer, and the headlining orator Edward Everett spoke for more than two hours. At that time, a two-hour speech was quite normal. Everett described the Battle of Gettysburg in great detail, and he brought the audience to tears more than once.

When Everett was finished, Lincoln got up, and pulled his speech from his coat pocket. It consisted of 10 sentences, a total of 272 words. The audience was distracted by a photographer setting up his camera, and by the time Lincoln had finished his speech and sat down the audience didn't even realize he had spoken. But the speech was reprinted in newspapers around the country, and it went on to become one of the most important speeches in American history.


Doc.

 

[AVB]

A little more info from Wiki plus the address itself.

Wills originally planned to dedicate this new cemetery on Wednesday, September 23, and invited Edward Everett, who had served as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Governor of Massachusetts, and president of Harvard University, to be the main speaker. At that time, Everett was widely considered to be the nation's greatest orator.[1] In reply, Everett told Wills and his organizing committee that he would be unable to prepare an appropriate speech in such a short period of time, and requested that the date be postponed. The committee agreed, and the dedication was postponed until Thursday, November 19.

Almost as an afterthought, Wills and the event committee invited Lincoln to participate in the ceremony. Wills' letter stated, "It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks."[2] Lincoln's role in the event was secondary, akin to the modern tradition of inviting a noted public figure to do a ribbon-cutting at a grand opening.[2]

Lincoln arrived by train in Gettysburg on November 18, and spent the night as a guest in Wills' house on the Gettysburg town square, where he put the finishing touches on the speech he had written in Washington.[3] Contrary to popular myth, Lincoln neither completed his address while on the train nor wrote it on the back of an envelope.[4] On the morning of November 19 at 9:30 A.M., Lincoln joined in a procession with the assembled dignitaries, townspeople, and widows marching out to the grounds to be dedicated astride a chestnut bay horse, between Secretary of State William H. Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase.[5][6]

Approximately 15,000 people are estimated to have attended the ceremony, including the sitting governors of six of the 24 Union states: Andrew Gregg Curtin of Pennsylvania, Augustus Bradford of Maryland, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Horatio Seymour of New York, Joel Parker of New Jersey, and David Tod of Ohio.[7] The precise location of the program within the grounds of the cemetery is disputed.[8] Reinterment of the bodies buried from field graves into the cemetery, which had begun within months of the battle, was less than half complete on the day of the ceremony.[9]


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.

 

[sack]

Seeing as how two hour speeches were the norm back then, they must have been one of the few medium for current news at the time. I can see wh they drew so many people, just to catch up on the news. Very interesting, thanks!

 

[AVB]

Bump

 

[sack]

Just a bit on Lincoln that i just learned. Seems that a photographer has come up with a photo of Lincoln that no one knew about. The number of photos of him are very rare so any new find is a valuable find, the photographer was allowed to digitally enhance a picture taken of the crowd at the Gettysburg Address, in the background the photographer found Lincoln clear as light walking with his tophat on his head. Not much, but something new.

 

[LilBastage]

I was Abraham Lincoln in the school play in 6th grade. I recited this address as my only lines. It didn't really mean a whole lot to me then, they were just words. As I've grown and (hopefully) matured, this has become one of the addresses in our nation's history that brings a tear to my eyes each time I hear it. Simple, to the point, and so much truth.

Thanks for posting this today.

 

[Saxjazzman]

Probably like many of you, I walked the battlefield at Gettysburg. I march up Little Round Top, walked Pickett's charge, stood at Devil's Den. Even now as I think of that battle and all the dead and wounded I still find it unbelievable that we can do that to each other. They say that when the sun rose over the battle field on 4 Jul that 17,000 lay dead. Lincoln did right by going there. He honored those dead by his presence and they honored him because of it. Thanks Doc and AVB.