The Gettysburg Address, 19 November 1863
In July 1863 Gettysburg Pennsylvania had been the site of one of the bloodiest and most important battles during the Civil War, where during the three day struggle over 51,000 causalities had been suffered on both sides. After the battle it was decided that a national cemetery would be created at the site, and seventeen acres were acquired for the cemetery.
Two days after Major Phillip Sidney Coolidge was killed at the battle of Chickamauga Creek, another friend of the The Bonds, Edward Everett, celebrated orator, diplomat, clergyman, and educator, was chosen as the principal speaker at the dedication at Gettsburg. President Abraham Lincoln had been invited almost as an afterthought to offer a "few appropriate remarks". The dedication ceremony had planned for October 23rd, but was later postponed until November 19th as Edward Everett requested more time to prepare. His speech over was 14,000 words, and he spoke for some two hours, in which he reviewed in detail the history of those who fought at Gettysburg as well as to chastise the South.
Lincoln's speech was only 272 words, and spoke for a little over 2 minutes. When he finished, there was just a sprinkling of applause, so Lincoln felt that his speech had been a failure, a poor speech that was too brief. The press only briefly mentioned it. Yet it is considered to be one of his best speeches and one of the most memorable of all time:
"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."
Later, Edward Everett wrote to the President and said,
"Dear Mr. President, I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central occasion in 2 hours as you did in 2 minutes."
On his way back to Washington, Lincoln came down with smallpox.