The Gettysburg Address is a dedication speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, following the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. The speech has come to be viewed as one of the most famous, enduring, and historically significant speeches in American history.
Lincoln delivered the speech on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, during a formal dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, on the grounds where the Battle of Gettysburg had been fought four and a half months earlier, between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In the battle, Union army soldiers successfully repelled and defeated Confederate forces in what proved to be the Civil War's deadliest and most decisive battle, resulting in more than 50,000 Confederate and Union army casualties in a Union victory that altered the war's course in the Union's favor.
The historical and enduring significance and fame of the Gettysburg Address is at least partly attributable to its brevity; it has only 271 words and was read in less than two minutes before approximately 15,000 people who had gathered to commemorate the sacrifice of the Union soldiers, over 3,000 of whom had been killed during the three-day battle. Lincoln began with a reference to the Declaration of Independence of 1776; "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."
He said that the Civil War was "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure". Lincoln then extolled the sacrifices of the thousands who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg in defense of those principles, and he argued that their sacrifice should elevate the nation's commitment to ensuring the Union prevailed and the nation endured, famously saying "that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedomWhite Jr., Ronald C. The Words That Moved a Nation in: "Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom ", Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State – Bureau of International Information Programs, p. 58.—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Despite the historical significance and fame that the speech ultimately obtained, Lincoln was scheduled to give only brief dedicatory remarks, following the main oration given by the elder statesman Edward Everett. Thus, Lincoln's closing remarks consumed a very small fraction of the day's event, which lasted for several hours. Nor was Lincoln's address immediately recognized as particularly significant. Over time, it came to be widely viewed as one of the greatest and most influential statements ever delivered on the American national purpose, and it came to be seen as one of the most prominent examples of the successful use of the English language and rhetoric to advance a political cause."Why the Gettysburg Address Is One of the Most Famous Speeches in History", the History Channel, November 15, 2024
Background
In inviting President Lincoln to speak at the ceremony, David Wills, a member of the committee for the November 19 Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, wrote, "It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks."Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp. 24–25, 34–36.
On November 18, 1863, Lincoln departed Washington, D.C. for Gettysburg, accompanied by three of his cabinet members, William Seward, John Usher, and Montgomery Blair, several foreign officials, his secretary John Nicolay, and his assistant secretary, John Hay. During the trip, Lincoln told Hay that he felt weak. The following morning, on November 19, Lincoln mentioned to Nicolay that he felt dizzy. Hay noted during the speech that Lincoln's face had "a ghastly color" and that he was "sad, mournful, almost haggard". After the speech, when Lincoln boarded the 6:30pm train to return to Washington, D.C., he was feverish and weak with a severe headache. He was subsequently diagnosed with a mild case of smallpox, which included a vesicular rash. Modern clinicians believe that Lincoln was likely in a prodromal period of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg later that night, just as the city was beginning to fill with large crowds who had arrived to participate in it the following day. Lincoln spent the night in Wills' house, where a large crowd appeared, singing and wanting Lincoln to speak. Lincoln left Wills' house to meet the crowd, but did not deliver any formal remarks, instead speaking briefly and extemporaneously. The crowd then continued on to the house where Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward was staying that night. Seward spoke to crowd. Later that night, Lincoln wrote and briefly met with Seward before going to sleep around midnight.
While Lincoln's short address proved to be by far the most historically notable that day, and is often held up as an example of English public oratory, Edward Everett's oration was slated to be the main speech of the day. His now seldom read speech was 13,607 words in length, and lasted two hours. During this era, lengthy dedication addresses of cemeteries, like the one delivered by Everett, were very common. The tradition began in 1831 when Justice Joseph Story delivered a lengthy dedication address at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Many of the lengthy addresses of the era linked cemeteries to the mission of the Union.Alfred L. Brophy, "These Great and Beautiful Republics of the Dead': Public Constitutionalism and the Antebellum Cemetery"
Text Shortly after Everett concluded his lengthy speech, which was well received by the crowd, Lincoln rose and, from the speakers' podium, addressed the crowd for only approximately two minutes.Murphy, Jim (1992). The Long Road to Gettysburg, New York: Clarion Books. p. 105, "with a pronounced Kentucky accent". His 271-word speech was ten sentences long.
Despite the historical significance of Lincoln's speech, modern scholars disagree on the precise wording in Lincoln's speech, and contemporary transcriptions published in newspaper accounts of the event and several of Lincoln's handwritten copies of the address differ slightly in wording, punctuation, and structure. Gopnik notes, "Gabor Boritt, in his book The Gettysburg Gospel, has a thirty-page appendix that compares what Lincoln (probably) read at the memorial with what people heard and reported. Most of the differences are small, and due to understandable confusions ... A few disputes seem more significant."Also note Johnson's reference that "In 1895 Congress had voted to place at Gettysburg a bronze tablet engraved with the address but had mandated a text that does not correspond to any in Lincoln's hand or to contemporary newspaper accounts. The statute is reprinted in Henry Sweetser Burrage, Gettysburg and Lincoln: The Battle, the Cemetery, and the National Park (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906), 211." Among these versions, the Bliss version, written by Lincoln after the speech as a favor for a friend, is viewed by many as the standard text.Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows, Appendix B p. 290: "This is the only copy that ... Lincoln dignified with a title: 'Address delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg,' a rare full signature, and the date: 'November 19, 1863.' ... This final draft, generally considered the standard text, remained in the Bliss family until 1949." Its text differs, however, from the written versions prepared by Lincoln before and after his speech. But it is the only version which includes Lincoln's signature, and the last version of the speech that he is known to have written.
The Bliss version is as follows:
Lincoln's sources In Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills notes the parallels between Lincoln's speech and Pericles's Funeral Oration during the Peloponnesian War, described by Thucydides. Pericles' speech, like Lincoln's:
Begins with an acknowledgment of revered predecessors: "I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honor of the first mention on an occasion like the present" Praises the uniqueness of the State's commitment to democracy: "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences" Honors the sacrifice of the slain, "Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face" Exhorts the living to continue the struggle: "You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue."
James M. McPherson notes this connection in his review of Wills's book. Gore Vidal also draws attention to this link in a BBC documentary about oration.
In contrast, writer Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker, notes that Everett's oration was explicitly neoclassical, referring directly to Marathon and Pericles. "Lincoln's rhetoric is, instead, deliberately Biblical. (It is difficult to find a single obviously classical reference in any of his speeches.) Lincoln had mastered the sound of the King James Bible so completely that he could recast abstract issues of constitutional law in Biblical terms, making the proposition that Texas and New Hampshire should be forever bound by a single post office sound like something right out of Genesis," Gopnik wrote.
Historian Allen C. Guelzo and others have suggested that Lincoln's phrase, "four score and seven", was an indirect reference to the King James Version of the Bible in which man's lifespan is described as "threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years". LaFantasie also connected "four score and seven years" with Psalms 90:10, and referred to Lincoln's usage of the phrase "our fathers" as "mindful of the Lord's Prayer". He also refers to Garry Wills's tracing of spiritual language in the address to the Gospel of Luke.
Wills also observed Lincoln's usage of the imagery of birth, life, and death in the address, during which he referenced the nation as being "brought forth", "conceived", and saying that it shall not "perish". A 1959 thesis by William J. Wolf suggested that the address had a central image of baptism, although Glenn LaFantasie, writing for the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, believes that Wolf's position was likely an overstatement. Philip B. Kunhardt Jr. suggests that Lincoln was inspired by the Book of Common Prayer.
Historian Matthew Pinsker believes Lincoln described "a new birth of freedom" based on The New York Times' July 6 report that soldiers had "baptized with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America." Lincoln was familiar with the reporting of that Times journalist, Samuel Wilkeson Jr.
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people"
Lincoln scholars have several theories about Lincoln's use of the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in the Gettysburg Address. Despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that a similar phrase appears in the prologue of John Wycliffe's 1384 English translation of the Bible.