The Gettysburg Address runs 272 words in its standard copy. Most Americans know a few of them. Far fewer know the story of how it came to be spoken: a field of hurried graves, a lawyer with a state commission, and a speaker who was not supposed to be the star.
In early July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg left the town full of wounded men and scattered, hurried graves. Many of the dead were buried where they fell, in shallow graves marked with pencil writing on wooden boards. Barns and homes became hospitals. Later, a large camp called Camp Letterman treated the wounded. More than 20,000 wounded passed through it, and its last patients left by January 1864.
The state of Pennsylvania took the lead, and the cemetery stayed state-organized until the federal government took over its administration in 1872. Governor Andrew Curtin was asked for state money, and a Gettysburg attorney named David Wills acted as the state's agent. The landscape architect William Saunders drew up the design for a new cemetery for the Union dead.
Wills's own home had been part of the emergency. It sheltered wounded and dying soldiers, local women nursed them there, the Sanitary Commission used it as a warehouse, and leaders met in it to plan the burials.
The reburials began on October 27, 1863. The work was not finished by the dedication. It was not completed until March 1864, nearly five months after it began. So when Lincoln spoke, graves were still being dug nearby.
A local veterinarian named Basil Biggs, a free Black man who had fled Gettysburg ahead of the Confederate army, was hired to exhume the Union dead from their battlefield graves. He was paid $1.25 per body, and supervised a crew of Black men. The National Park Service says that handling the bodies fell largely on Gettysburg's Black community. Biggs helped rebury more than 3,000 soldiers.
There were no government dog tags in the Civil War. The dead were identified by friends, or by letters and belongings found on them. Some 979 men were buried in numbered graves marked unknown.
Wills first suggested October 23 for the dedication. But the main speaker, Edward Everett, one of the most famous orators in America, said he could not be ready before November 19. So the date moved.
Printed invitations went out to many people, including the president. When Lincoln accepted, it was a surprise. On November 2, Wills sent him a personal invitation. Everett would give the main oration. Lincoln was there to speak briefly.
Lincoln spent the night of November 18 at the Wills home. The park service estimates that as many as 20,000 people came to town. On the morning of the 19th, a procession moved down Baltimore Street, with Lincoln on horseback. The ceremony started about an hour late.
One common mistake: many people think Lincoln spoke at the big Soldiers' National Monument. The National Park Service says that monument has long been misidentified as the spot. It was built later, completed in 1869. Lincoln spoke nearby, at the dedication of the cemetery.
The program had a funeral dirge and a prayer by the chaplain Thomas Stockton. The Marine Band played Old Hundred. Then Everett spoke for nearly two hours. After a hymn, Lincoln spoke for about two minutes. Another hymn followed, and then a benediction by H. L. Baugher.
Next, the speech itself. This is the text of the Bliss copy, the version Lincoln wrote out by hand in 1864. No recording of his voice exists, so here it is read aloud.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now, how did the newspapers handle it? Many reprinted both speeches, and Cornell University Library's Gettysburg exhibit notes that the reaction was frequently divided along political lines.
The Chicago Times, a Democratic paper that opposed Lincoln, wrote on November 23:
“The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances.”
The Springfield Republican, in Massachusetts, a paper that backed the Republican Party, wrote:
“His little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression.”
In Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, the two local papers split. The Illinois State Register, which criticized the president, wrote on November 24 that it was inappropriate to have invited the prince of jokers to the consecration. The Illinois State Journal, which supported him, reported immense applause and three cheers.
The Harrisburg Patriot and Union, a Democratic paper in Pennsylvania, wrote on November 24:
“We pass over the silly remarks of the President.”
In 2013, that paper, now called the Patriot-News, retracted the editorial and said it regrets the error.
The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, wrote:
“They have in our humble judgment the charm and power of the very highest eloquence.”
So the papers split, and mostly along party lines. Penn State historian William Blair told PolitiFact that the Harrisburg paper was a Democratic organ dedicated to the defeat of Republicans, and that Republican papers were very supportive. The papers shown here are the ones whose reaction is documented in the sources we checked. It is not a count of every paper in the North.
The day after, Everett wrote to Lincoln that Lincoln had come closer to the central idea of the occasion in two minutes than he had in two hours. Historian Eric Foner told PolitiFact that in 1863 Lincoln was more revered for the Emancipation Proclamation than for this speech.
The Confederate dead were not placed in the national cemetery. In the 1870s, Confederate veterans' groups moved about 3,200 remains to cemeteries in the South.
Today the speech is widely praised. On this piece of history we do take a side: the Union cause was right, and slavery was wrong. Our stance of showing every side applies to today's news, where we let you decide. Find more at politicalwatercooler.com.
Sources
- Cornell University Library, Gettysburg exhibit: contemporary reactions
- PolitiFact, Was Lincoln's Gettysburg Address initially ridiculed?
- NPR, 150 years later, newspaper retracts Gettysburg Address diss
- National Park Service, Soldiers' National Cemetery
- National Park Service Historical Handbook 9, Lincoln and Gettysburg