On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a brief speech at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Gettysburg Address has become one of the best-known speeches in American history.
Just a few months earlier, at the beginning of July 1863, Gettysburg had been the site of a major Civil War battle. Confederate General Robert E. Lee was attempting to invade the Union, hoping to push as far north as Philadelphia. George Meade had been in charge of the Union troops for only three days after Joseph Hooker had resigned his command in objection to Lincoln's refusal to send extra troops for the battle with Lee.
The first skirmishes occurred on July 1. About 22,000 Union soldiers and about 27,000 Confederates fought for control of the town. At the end of the day, the Union had been pushed to the south of town, but held an important defensive position at the top of Cemetery Hill. Lee had not yet arrived, but sent orders to Richard Ewell, the commander on the ground, to take the hill; Ewell did not make the attempt, believing he would not succeed.
By the morning of July 2, the full armies of both sides had arrived, approximately 100,000 men for the Union, and about 75,000 Confederates. The Union held a relatively compact position atop Cemetery Hill and neary Culp's Hill; the Confederate army attempted to flank the Union on both sides, spreading its soldiers out over a front line that was five miles long. The Union soldiers held their position for two days of intense fighting before Lee and the Confederates retreated and headed south.
Meade followed Lee's army for the next few weeks, engaging in a few minor battles, but his pursuit was not as aggressive as Lincoln had hoped it would be. Had Lee's army been more thoroughly defeated, the war might have come to a quicker end. Even so, the battle was an important turning point. It badly damaged Lee's reputation as an invincible general, and it ended the Confederacy's hopes of being recognized as a nation by England and other European countries.
Even without a fiercer pursuit, Gettysburg was the Civil War battle that resulted in the most casualties. Estimates are that about 8,000 men were killed, as many as 27,000 were injured, and more than 10,000 were either captured or missing.
In mid-October, work began on clearing the fallen soldiers from the battlefield and giving them proper graves in the new Soldier's National Cemetery. The dedication ceremony for the cemetery took place on November 19. The governors of six states were in attendance, and President Lincoln's remarks were not even expected to be the highlight of the day.
What was meant to be the day's major speech was given by Edward Everett, a former member of Congress and Secretary of State, and one of the great orators of his day. Everett spoke for two hours, not uncommon at such ceremonies in the mid-19th century, and his speech is rarely read or quoted today. Lincoln's address, on the other hand, was ten sentences long and lasted for only a few minutes, and many of its phrases are instantly familiar: "Four score and seven years ago;" "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here;" "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
News photographers were present at the ceremony, but there are no photographs of Lincoln delivering the address because it took longer at the time to set up the cameras than it took Lincoln to make his remarks.
Public reaction to the speech was mixed. Everett recognized the effectiveness of Lincoln's address, and wrote to him the next day, "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." Reaction from the press was divided along partisan lines, with pro-Lincoln papers praising the speech and anti-Lincoln papers dismissing it. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union said the speech "deserved the veil of oblivion;" on the 150th anniversary of the speech, the paper (now the Harrisburg Patriot-News) retracted and apologized for its original response.
The Gettysburg Address (e-book | e-audio | audio) remains a masterpiece of concise, clear, powerful prose. Garry Wills writes about the importance of the speech in Lincoln at Gettysburg (e-book | print), as does Gabor Borit in The Gettysburg Gospel (e-book | e-audio | print). In 2015, the Abraham Lincoln Presidental Library Foundation asked politicians, poets, historians, and others to respond to the Gettysburg Address; their responses were to be limited to the 272-word length of the address, and are collected in Gettysburg Replies (e-book | print).
The documentary Lincoln@Gettysburg (streaming | DVD) looks at Lincoln's use of the new telegraph technology to communicate with his armies and with the nation. Ken Burns' The Address (streaming | DVD) is set at a small Vermont school for boys with learning disabilities; each of its students is asked to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And the final lecture in John Hale's Great Courses program The Art of Public Speaking (streaming | audio) is devoted to the Address.
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