At the cemetery dedication in Gettysburg, Lincoln delivered a short speech explaining the Civil War through founding principles, sacrifice, and the survival of democratic government. Other speeches were also given that day. Its later influence far exceeded its length, showing how commemoration and education can keep a public text in circulation.
Historical background
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.
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."
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 6:30 pm 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'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.
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.
Contemporary sources and reaction
Eyewitness reports vary on Lincoln's performance and delivery of the Gettysburg Address. In 1931, the printed recollections of 87-year-old Mrs. Sarah A. Cooke Myers, who was 19 when she attended the ceremony, suggest a dignified silence followed Lincoln's speech. "I was close to the President and heard all of the Address, but it seemed short. Then there was an impressive silence like our Menallen Friends Meeting. There was no applause when he stopped speaking." According to historian Shelby Foote, after Lincoln's presentation, the applause was delayed, scattered, and "barely polite". In contrast, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin says, "He pronounced that speech in a voice that all the multitude heard. The crowd was hushed into silence because the President stood before them... It was so Impressive! It was the common remark of everybody. Such a speech, as they said it was!"