....on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, dignitaries gathered for the commemoration of a cemetery for the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought just 4 months earlier. There was a chorus singing, a chaplain offering prayers and a band playing patriotic songs. Noted orator Edward Everett was the main event, and he spoke for nearly two hours, using every oratorical flourish that was expected of the great orators of the period. President
Abraham Lincoln, who was only invited to the event two weeks before, was asked to deliver some "brief remarks" after Mr. Everett's oration. Lincoln had written his remarks in Washington, and had polished them on the train ride up to Gettysburg. Most contemporary observers expected Mr. Everett's speech to be long remembered and quoted, not the President's; indeed, the immediate reaction to President Lincoln's "brief remarks" was not kind. The Chicago Tribune called his address "
silly, flat and dishwatery." The Harrisburg, PA paper said, "
We pass over the silly remarks of the President [and] are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of." How wrong they were.
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| President Lincoln, slightly left of center, hatless and looking down, during the cemetery commemoration, November 19, 1863. Brady-Handy Collection, Library of Congress |
Not since the founding of the country had there been such a clear and profound statement of what this nation is dedicated to and what it could become with a "new birth of freedom." The 272 words that President Lincoln spoke have become what Pulitzer Prize winner MacKinlay Kantor called "
the most famous words of the American tradition." They have become a cornerstone of the American civic catechism, words that are memorized by nearly every school kid and enshrined in our history. As well they should be.
(citation: MacKinlay Kantor, "Gettysburg," Random House, 1952)
