May 27, 2001

Final Change Made Gettysburg Address Memorable

The custom of Memorial Day came out of the Civil War - a conflict similar to the Vietnam War in the depth of self-doubt it generated among Americans.

President Abraham Lincoln was one of the few who understood the larger implications of what was then an unpopular war.

The war began as a trade dispute between the agricultural South and the industrial North. It soon flared into a moral war - whether to preserve states' rights (including slavery), or to extend individuals' rights (regardless of contractual conditions).

This is a fundamental difference - one that has not yet been entirely settled.

To both sides, the killing seemed senseless. Yet, the battles raged indecisively as each army sought to establish right with might.

The decision, militarily, came at Gettysburg, Pa., during the first three days of July 1863. Fifty thousand men were killed or severely wounded in this single engagement.

When it was over, the leaders of both sides knew the issue was settled. Nonetheless, the South hung on desperately for nearly two more years hoping for a miracle.

There were so many dead soldiers on the ground after the fleeing and pursuing armies quit the battlefield, the villagers of Gettysburg were unable to bury the dead properly. The bodies were covered with lime until shallow, mass graves could be scooped out. Rains washed off the pitiful covering almost as fast as it could be scraped over.

In desperation, they appealed to the governor of Pennsylvania for assistance. He, in turn, asked the other northern governors to help rebury all bodies - Union and Confederate - with dignity and establish the resulting burying ground a cemetery and a national memorial.

The Honorable Edward Everett of Massachusetts, recognized as the greatest orator of the day, was asked to give the principal address in October. He complained that he could not prepare an oration for so important an occasion in two month's time. Therefore, the event was rescheduled for November.

President Lincoln was so unpopular that sponsors had not considered asking him to participate. Just two weeks before the ceremony, however, Lincoln was asked "as chief executive to set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks."

* * *

If Lincoln noticed the slight, characteristically he said nothing. He set to work in his limited, quiet moments to compose a brief dedication.

Lincoln knew well the significance of the Battle of Gettysburg. He decided to focus the nation's attention - North and South - on the fundamental principles underlying the epic struggle.

He was an avid reader of the Holy Bible. He kept a well-thumbed edition on his bedside table and frequently sought inspiration from the eternal truths it set forth.

It was no happenstance, therefore, that Lincoln couched the words for his Gettysburg address in the same majestic cadence of the King James translation of the Bible.

Lincoln took extra pains to make the few remarks allocated to him compelling. Contrary to popular legend, he did not dash off the speech on the train carrying him to Gettysburg.

The president wrote out a draft of what he wanted to say on a single sheet of White House stationery two days before the event.

He was coming down with a mild case of smallpox and kept a wet cloth on his forehead during the train trip the next day to Gettysburg. He was observed on the train making notes on the back of and envelope, and it may have been lines he later transferred to his speech.

Lincoln added a final 30 words to his speech in pencil when he went to his bedroom in the Gettysburg home of Daniel Wells that evening.

On the morning of the dedication, Nov. 10, 1863, Lincoln made a fresh copy - changing a few words as he wrote. He rode horseback in a military parade to the cemetery.

Despite his careful preparation, he still made an extemporaneous change as he delivered the speech - thus necessitating a fourth draft, after the event, on order to give an accurate text to his secretary.

Construction of the speech displays an impressive grasp of logic.

It moved from the past, to the present, to the future. It starts with the birth of the nation, moves to its symbolic death and concludes with its rebirth - the pattern of the New Testament.

Focus of the address is progressively narrowed from the continent, to the nation, to the war, to the cemetery - until the attention of the listeners is riveted to the event at Gettysburg.

Lincoln was concerned for the sound of words. He desired to emphasize the role of people in his belief of a national rebirth. Consequently I believe the famous last line emphasized the word "people" rather than the grammatical preposition preceding it.

Everett spoke for two hours - and no one remembers a word of what he said. Lincoln summed up the larger meaning of the unpopular war in only 10 sentences, 269 words, delivered in three minutes and projected a positive achievement. His words are immortal.

* * *

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 battlefield 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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 the government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE, shall not perish from the earth.

* * *

Lincoln's little speech was hardly noticed by the audience. They had not begun to focus on the words before it was over.

Recognition came with the report of a British correspondent to his newspaper. Favorable reaction of his readers, who favored the Confederacy, moved American papers to reprint the speech with favorable comment days later.

The final change that Lincoln added as he delivered his address was the addition of two words - "under God."

Having gathered his inspiration from the Bible, having shaped his words in Biblical tone, having constructed his address in pattern of the Holy Bible, Lincoln instinctively added the final and most important ingredient - the blessing of God.

Before the war was over, citizens north and south spontaneously responded to Lincoln's gesture of marking the graves of military dead with flowers, flags, speeches, bugles and rifle volleys.

Various days were designated by states to pay homage to their valiant soldiers. Some states called the remembrances Decoration Day and some Memorial Day.

President Richard Nixon in 1971 declared Memorial Day a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.

Author: Lindsey Williams

cutline - Lincoln

Photo from National Archives, Washington, D.C.

[Parade at Gettysburg, Pa., Nov. 19, 1863, led by President Abraham Lincoln, on the way to dedicate a military cemetery for Union and Confederate soldiers killed in the decisive battle there four months earlier. ]

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