The "...The Most Memorable 272 Words Ever Uttered!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading for the umpteenth time the words to one of the greatest speeches in the history of the United States; The Gettysburg Address.  About 60 miles and an hour or so away from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, via the original Route 30, sits the Soldiers National Cemetery on Cemetery Hill.  

The Soldiers' National Monument.

It was on November 19, 1863, 155 years ago, that Edward Everett delivered his two-hour oration, from memory, on the Battle of Gettysburg and its significance.  That was followed by a hymn composed especially for the ocassion by B.B. French.  After the hymn ended, the tall, slender, stately man in the knee-length jacket, President Abraham Lincoln rose and walked to the dias.  He spoke for less than two minutes; 272 words to be exact.  His "remarks" are recognized as some of the most memorable in the history of our nation.  In his remarks he said that the "world will little note, nor long remember what we say here."  Wow!  Even after a century and a half, his remarks endure.  One historian even said that Lincoln's words stand as "the world's foremost statement of freedom and democracy and the sacrifices required to achieve and defend them."  Over the years many have written countless words about Lincoln's brief speech and many have spread untruths about it.  

President Abraham Lincoln giving his remarks at Gettysburg, PA.

One person wrote that the President jotted his remarks on the back of an envelope while riding the train to Gettysburg, whereas it has been proven that he composed his speech in Washington, D.C.  Another wrote that Mr. Everett's lengthy speech was an imposition where in the mid-19th century this was more normal than not.  (Aren't you glad you don't live in the mid-19th century!)  Another writer said that Everett's voice was sweet and expertly modulated while Lincoln's voice was high pitched to the point of being shrill and his Kentucky accent offended some eastern sensibilities, but he was good at rhythmic delivery with meaningful inflections as well as having an emphatic delivery.  He was actually interrupted by applause five times.  

This monument commemorates Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,
November 19, 1863.  The Address was delivered about 300
yards from this spot along the upper Cemetery drive.  The
site is now marked by the Soldiers' National Monument.

It is worth noting that President Lincoln composed his remarks without the aid of speech- writers or advisers and that Lincoln will be distin- guished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached.  Today there are five known copies of his speech in Lincoln's own handwriting, each with a different text, and named for the people who first received them: Nicolay, Hay, Everett, Bancroft and Bliss.  Two copies were written before he delivered his speech with one probably being the copy he read on November 19.  The remaining copies were written months later for benefit events.  It was also said that there was no way possible that he could have handwritten a copy on the train since the rail line was known for its bumpy Civil War-era tracks.  Carol and I travel from Lancaster toward Gettysburg quite often, since our daughter and her family live near Frederick, Maryland.  We pass over the railroad tracks in New Oxford, Pennsylvania every visit and every time I drive over the tracks I think of that day in 1863 that President Lincoln traveled this same route on his way to Gettysburg.  The remarks that Abraham Lincoln gave that day 155 years ago to dedicate the Soldiers National Cemetery will never be forgotten and will live on forever.  Following is the text of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

Fourscore 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 this 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.

With the Civil War in its third year, the nation was enduring a staggering cost in human life, and Lincoln felt compelled to offer a moral justification for the war.  The Gettysburg Address you just read was delivered on November 19, 1863.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.