Lincoln Goes to Gettysburg

[Jim Watt]

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"TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE" MINISTRIES

Jim & Marie Watt

PO Box 25116 – Federal Way WA 98093-2116

Tel: 253.874.4265 – Email: jmbetter at gmail.com

Web: www.2rbetter.org – April 16, 2008



"LINCOLN GOES TO GETTYSBURG"

(From: Carl Sandburg, Reader's Digest, 1936)



When Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania set aside November 19, 1863, for the
dedication of a National Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg, the only
invitation President Lincoln received to attend the ceremonies was a printed
circular.



The duties of orator of the day had fallen on Edward Everett. An eminent
figure, perhaps the foremost of all American classical orators, he had been
Governor of Massachusetts, Ambassador to Great Britain and President of
Harvard. There were four published volumes of his orations. His lecture on
Washington, delivered 122 times in three years, had in 1859 brought a fund
of $58,000, which he gave for the purchase of Mount Vernon as a permanent
shrine.



Serene, suave, handsomely venerable in his 69th year, Everett was a natural
choice of the Pennsylvania commissioners, who gave him two months to prepare
his address. The decision to invite Lincoln to speak was an afterthought. As
one of the commissioners later wrote: "The question was raised as to his
ability to speak upon such a solemn occasion; the invitation was not settled
upon until about two weeks before the exercises were held."



In these dark days Lincoln was far from popular in many quarters. Some
newspapers claimed that the President was going to make a stump speech over
the graves of the Gettysburg dead as a political show. Thaddeus Stevens,
Republican floor leader in the House, believed in '63 that Lincoln was a
"dead card" in the political deck. He favored Chase for the next President,
and hearing that Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward were going to
Gettysburg, he commented: "The dead going to bury the dead."



On the day before the ceremony a special train decorated with
red-white-and-blue bunting stood ready to take the presidential party to
Gettysburg. When his escort remarked that they had no time to lose,
Lincolnsaid he felt like an
Illinois man who was going to be hanged, and as the man passed along the
road on the way to the gallows, the crowds kept pushing into the way and
blocking passage. The condemned man at last called out: "Boys, you needn't
be in such a hurry; there won't be any fun till I get there."



Reaching Gettysburg, Lincoln was driven to a private residence on the public
square. The sleepy little country town was overflowing. Private homes were
filled with notables and nondescripts. Hundreds slept on the floors of
hotels. Bands blared till late in the night. When serenaders called on the
President for a speech, he responded: "In my position it is sometimes
important that I should not say foolish things." (A voice: "If you can help
it.") "It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing
at all. Believing that is my present condition this evening, I must beg of
you to excuse me from addressing you further." The crown didn't feel it was
much of a speech. They went next door with the band and blared for Seward.



Beset with problems attendant on the conduct of the war, Lincoln had little
time to prepare his address. About ten o'clock that night before the
ceremony he sat down in his room to do more work on it. It was midnight or
later when he went to sleep.



At least 15,000 people were on Cemetery Hill for the exercises next day when
the procession from Gettysburg arrived afoot and horseback. The President's
horse seemed small for him. One of the commissioners, riding just behind the
President, noted that he sat erect and looked majestic to begin with, and
then got to thinking so his body leaned forward, his arms hung limp and his
head bent far down.



The parade had begun to move at eleven, and in 15 minutes it was over. But
the orator of the day had not arrived. Bands played till noon. Mr. Everett
arrived. On the platform sat state governors, Army officers, foreign
ministers, Members of Congress, the President and his party.



When Edward Everett was introduced, he bowed low to Lincoln, then stood in
silence before a crowd that stretched to limits that would test his voice.
Around were the wheat fields, the meadows, the peach orchards, and beyond,
the contemplative blue ridge of a low mountain range. He had taken note of
these in his prepared and rehearsed address. "Overlooking these broad fields
now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies
dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is
with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of
God and Nature."



He proceeded: "It was appointed by law in Athens --" and gave an extended
sketch of the manner in which the Greeks cared for their dead who fell in
battle. He gave an outline of how the war began, traversed decisive features
of the three days' battles at Gettysburg, denounced the doctrine of state
sovereignty, drew parallels from European history, and came to his
peroration quoting Pericles on dead patriots: "The whole earth is the
sepulcher of illustrious men." He spoke for an hour and 57 minutes. It was
the effort of his life, and embodied the perfections of the school of
oratory in which he had spent his career.



When the time came for Lincoln to speak he put on his steel-bowed glasses,
rose, and holding in one hand the two sheets of paper at which he
occasionally glanced, he delivered in his high-pitched and clear-carrying
voice. A photographer bustled about with his equipment, but before he had
his head under the hood for an exposure, the President said "by the people
and for the people," and the nick of time was past for a photograph. The ten
sentences were spoken in five minutes, and the applause was merely formal –
a tribute to the occasion, to the high office, by persons who had sat as an
audience for three hours.



That evening Lincoln took the train back to Washington. He was weary, talked
little, stretched out on the seats and had a wet towel laid across his
forehead. He felt that about all he had given the audience was ordinary
garden-variety dedicatory remarks. "That speech," he said, "was a flat
failure, and the people are disappointed."



Much of the newspaper reaction was more condemnatory. The Patriot and
Unionof nearby
Harrisburg took its fling: "The President acted without sense and without
constraint in a panorama that was gotten up more for the benefit of his
party than for the honor of the dead…. We pass over the silly remarks of the
President: for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of
oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated
or thought of." And the Chicago Times fumed: "The cheek of every American
must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterance
of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the
President of the United States." Wrote the correspondent of the London Times,
"Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce."



A reporter for the Chicago Tribune, however, telegraphed a prophetic
sentence: "The dedicatory remarks of President Lincoln will live among the
annals of man." The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin said thousands who would
not read the elaborate oration of Mr. Everett would read the President's few
words, "and not many will do it without a moistening of the eye and a
swelling of the heart." And a writer in Harper's Weekly: "The oration by Mr.
Everett was smooth and cold … The few words of the President were from the
heart to the heart. They cannot be read, even, without kindling emotion.
'The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here.' It was as simple and felicitous and
earnest a word as was ever spoken."



Everett's opinion of the speech, written in a note to Lincoln the next day,
was more than mere courtesy. "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." Lincoln's reply: "In our respective parts you could not
have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to
know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a
failure."





NOTE:  "He Loved Me Truly" were the words of Lincoln's Step-mother on behalf
of her Step-son at the time of his assassination.



In mid-war he was asked to give his famous 5 minute Gettysburg address of 10
sentences. Here is an account of that day, and the context for one of the
most unusual and famous speeches of all of history.                    Jim
Watt









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