November 19, 1863.

Abraham Lincoln delivered his celebrated Gettysburg Address while dedicating the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA. Just over four months after the famous battle, with scars from the contest still very much visible in and around the town, a large crowd of citizens and distinguished civilians gathered on the summit of Cemetery Hill - the key ground of the three-day battle. The famous orator Edward Everett was charged with delivering the key note address of the ceremony. The text of Everett's speech was over 13,000 words in length and lasted over two hours.

Upon the conclusion of the key note speech, President Abraham Lincoln, in the beginning stages of a bout with a mild case of small pox, delivered the now immortal words that have echoed through the course of history:

quote:
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.

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 that 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.

The speech was so short that photographers present at the event were unable to set their cameras up in time to photograph Lincoln giving his address. At just 271 words in length, it is one of the shortest speeches ever given by a U.S. president at an official ceremony. Many contemporary commentators regarded it as a flop. However, Edward Everett was perhaps among the first to recognize the importance of the Gettysburg Address when he quipped sometime after the ceremony: "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."

As the years went by, the significance of the speech became ever more apparent. Now in 2023, the Gettysburg Address is regarded by many historians as the greatest political speech in American history. Despite this, however, the exact text of the speech and the exact location in the cemetery where it was delivered both remain disputed. The quoted text above, the only version which Lincoln signed his name to, is agreed by most historians to be the "standard" text of the speech. However, there are those who dispute it. The monument to the speech, located in the middle of the Soldier's National Cemetery atop Cemetery Hill, is not in the exact spot where the platform is believed to have been placed all those years ago. So the exact location of the speech has been incorrectly marked for years.

Nevertheless, one of the most famous speeches in American history was delivered...160 years ago today.

The only confirmed photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863)

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