The sky, at first overcast, cleared during the ceremony. John Hay called it “one of the most beautiful Indian Summer days ever enjoyed.”200 As people swarmed into town, Lincoln rose early, toured the battlefield with Seward, and polished his address. To a reporter who had managed to gain access to the Wills’ house, the president said: “The best course for the journals of the country to pursue, if they wished to sustain the Government, was to stand by the officers of the army.” Rather than harping on military failures, newspapers should urge people to render “all the aid in their power” to the war effort.201 At 10 o’clock, Lincoln joined the procession to the cemetery, led by Ward Hill Lamon, the marshal in charge of arrangements. Upon emerging from the Wills house, wearing a black suit and white gauntlets, Lincoln encountered a huge crowd whose deafening cheers made him blush. A journalist noted that his “awkwardness which is so often remarked does not extend to his horsemanship.”202 Another reporter wrote that once in the saddle, Lincoln “sat up the tallest and grandest rider in the procession, bowing and nearly laughing his acknowledgments to the oft-repeated cheers—‘Hurrah for Old Abe;’ and ‘We’re coming, Father Abraham,’ and one solitary greeting of its kind, ‘God save Abraham Lincoln.’ ”203 His admirers insisted on shaking hands until marshals finally intervened to protect his arm from more wrenching.
Benjamin Brown French, acting as one of Lamon’s assistants, was struck by the way people lionized the president. “Abraham Lincoln is the idol of the American people at this moment,” French confided to his journal. “Anyone who saw & heard as I did, the hurricane of applause that met his every movement at Gettysburg would know that he lived in every heart. It was no cold, faint, shadow of a kind reception—it was a tumultuous outpouring of exultation, from true and loving hearts, at the sight of a man whom everyone knew to be honest and true and sincere in every act of his life, and every pulsation of his heart. It was the spontaneous outburst of heartfelt confidence in their own President.”204 A Virginia woman visiting Gettysburg recorded in her diary that “[s]uch homage I never saw or imagined could be shown to any one person as the people bestow on Lincoln. The very mention of his name brings forth shouts of applause.”205
Amid the firing of minute guns and the huzzahing of the crowd, the procession, as John Hay put it, “formed itself in an orphanly sort of way & moved out with very little help from anybody.”206 Led by the Marine Band, the long line of marchers and riders advanced slowly, reaching the cemetery in about twenty minutes. Thanks to recent rains, the immense cavalcade stirred up little dust. A Gettysburg resident described the procession as “a grand and impressive sight. I have no language to depict it and though the mighty mass rolled on as the waves of the ocean, everything was in perfect order.”207
At the cemetery, Lincoln and three dozen other honored guests—including governors, congressmen, senators, cabinet members, and generals—took their places on the 12’ × 20’ platform. As the president slowly approached that stage, the 15,000 spectators maintained a respectful silence. In keeping with the solemnity of the occasion, men removed their hats. While waiting for the ceremony to begin, Martin D. Potter of the Cincinnati Commercial sketched a pen portrait of Lincoln: “A Scotch type of countenance, you say, with the disadvantage of emaciation by a siege of Western ague. It is a thoughtful, kindly, care-worn face, impassive in repose, the eyes cast down, the lids thin and firmly set, the cheeks sunken, and the whole indicating weariness, and anything but good health.”208
(Around that time, a White House caller thought Lincoln was so weary that he resembled “a New York omnibus beast at night who had been driven all day” during an August heat spell. Journalists reported that he was “not looking well,” that he was “careworn,” that he appeared “thin and feeble,” and that “his eyes have lost their humorous expression.” Lincoln refused to heed the advice of friends who urged him to leave the capital to recruit his health.)209
Once the other dignitaries were seated, a dirge opened the proceedings, followed by the Rev. Dr. Thomas H. Stockton’s long prayer, which, Hay quipped, “thought it was an oration.”210 Stockton may have bored Hay, but he brought tears to many eyes, including those of the president. For the next two hours, Everett delivered his polished, carefully researched and memorized speech describing the battle, analyzing the causes and nature of the war, rebutting secessionist arguments, predicting a quick postwar sectional reconciliation, citing ancient Greek funeral rites, and denouncing the enemy. Now and then Lincoln smiled at especially apt passages. At one point, he whispered his approval in Seward’s ear. When Everett alluded to the suffering of the dying troops, tears came to Lincoln’s eyes, as they did to the eyes of most auditors.
Everett’s speech as a whole did not move everyone. The crowd gave it only tepid applause, and the Philadelphia Daily Age remarked dismissively: “Seldom has a man talked so long and said so little. He told us nothing about the dead heroes, nothing of their former deeds, nothing of their glories before they fell like conquerors before their greater conqueror, Death. He gave us plenty of words, but no heart.” The editors objected to the “frigid sentences” and “classical conceits.”211 George William Curtis found the oration “smooth and cold,” lacking “one stirring thought, one vivid picture, one thrilling appeal.”212 Another observer likened Everett to a “hired mourner—the laureate chanting a funeral dirge to order, with no touch of ‘in memoriam’ about it. His monument was an iron statue with no glow or pulse or passion in it.”213 The Milwaukee Sentinel complained that the speech lacked “the fire and spirit of true eloquence” and failed “to stir the blood and absorb the feelings, as one had reason to expect on such an occasion, and from so famous an orator.”214
The New York press also found little to admire. The Herald called it “milk and water; utterly inadequate, although his sentences were as smooth as satin and his metaphors as chaste as snow.”215 The World opined that Mr. Everett “has fallen below his own reputation in the greatest opportunity ever presented to him, for rearing a monument more enduring than brass. … Every figure is culled in advance; every sentence composed in the closet; every gesture practiced before a mirror. … But where nature requires a voice, Mr. Everett’s tears lie too near his eyes; they never gush up from the depths of a swelling heart.”216
After a musical interlude, Lincoln slowly rose to speak, causing a stir of expectation. His “reception was quite cordial,” noted Benjamin Perley Poore.217 The Washington Chronicle reported that when Lamon introduced Lincoln, the president was “vociferously cheered by the vast audience.”218 As spectators on the outer fringes of the crowd pressed forward, those closer to the platform pushed back, causing a brief disturbance. A nurse in the audience recalled that she and the others “seemed packed like fishes in a barrel,” so tightly jammed together that they nearly suffocated.219 When calm was restored, the president put on his glasses, drew a paper from his pocket, and read his brief remarks “in a very deliberate manner, with strong emphasis, and with a most business-like air.” His voice was so clear and loud that it carried to the outer extremities of the crowd.220 John Hay recorded in his diary that Lincoln spoke “in a firm free way, with more grace than is his wont.”221
Lincoln’s words were taken down by reporters whose accounts differ slightly. The Associated Press correspondent, Joseph L. Gilbert, claimed that after delivering the speech, Lincoln allowed him to copy the text from his manuscript. Charles Hale of the Boston Daily Advertiser recorded Lincoln’s words in shorthand. Conflating these two versions, we can obtain a good idea of what Lincoln actually said. It differs from the revised versions he made later when donating copies to charitable causes. The following text is what he probably said, with bracketed italics representing revisions he made for the final version (the so-called “Bliss copy” of the speech, the one that is best known):
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon [on] this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equ
al. [Applause.] 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 are met [have come] to dedicate a portion of it [that field] as the [a] final resting place of [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. [Applause.] The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. [Applause.] It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that [which] they [who fought here] have thus far so nobly carried on [advanced]. [Applause.] 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 here gave [they gave] the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain [applause]; that the nation shall, under God, [nation, under God, shall] have a new birth of freedom; and that Government of the people, by the people, [for the people] and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. [Long-continued applause.]222
The audience was profoundly moved. Isaac Jackson Allen of the Columbus Ohio State Journal reported that Lincoln’s “calm but earnest utterance of this deep and beautiful address stirred the deepest fountains of feeling and emotion in the hearts of the vast throngs before him; and when he had concluded, scarcely could an untearful eye be seen, while sobs of smothered emotion were heard on every hand.” When the president said that the “world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here,” a captain who had lost an arm “burst all restraint; and burying his face in his handkerchief, he sobbed aloud while his manly frame shook with no unmanly emotion. In a few moments, with a stern struggle to master his emotions, he lifted his still streaming eyes to heaven and in a low and solemn tone exclaimed, ‘God Almighty bless Abraham Lincoln!’ ”223
As Everett noted, the president’s handiwork was “greatly admired.”224 The Cincinnati Gazette reported that “the universal encomium” bestowed on it was that it “was the right thing, in the right place, and a perfect thing in every respect.”225 Isaac Jackson Allen termed it “the best word of his administration,” accurately predicting that it “will live long after many more elaborate and pretentious utterances shall have been forgotten.”226 The Philadelphia Press correspondent called it a “brief, but immortal speech,” and the paper ran an editorial stating that “the occasion was sublime; certainly the ruler of the nation never stood higher, and grander, and more prophetic.”227 The Chicago Tribune reporter declared that the “dedicatory remarks of President Lincoln will live among the annals of man.”228 Other papers shared this high opinion. The Washington Chronicle said that the speech “glittered with gems, evincing the gentleness and goodness of heart peculiar to him.”229 The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin remarked that the “President’s brief speech is most happily expressed. It is warm, earnest, unaffected and touching.”230
Men of letters were equally enthusiastic. Josiah G. Holland of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican wrote that “the rhetorical honors of the occasion were won by President Lincoln. His little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma. Then it has the merit of unexpectedness in its verbal perfection and beauty. We had grown so accustomed to homely and imperfect phrases in his productions that we had come to think it was the law of his utterance. But this shows he can talk handsomely as well as act sensibly. Turn back and read it over, it will repay study as a model speech. Strong feelings and a large brain were its parents.”231 James Burrill Angell, president of Brown University, confessed that he did not know “where to look for a more admirable speech than the brief one which the President made at the close of Mr. Everett’s oration. It is often said that the hardest thing in the world is to make a five minute speech. But could the most elaborate and splendid oration be more beautiful, more touching, more inspiring than those few words of the President? They had in my humble judgement the charm and power of the very highest eloquence.”232 George William Curtis thought that the “few words of the President went from the heart to the heart. They cannot be read, even, without kindling emotion. … It was as simple and felicitous and earnest a word as was ever spoken.” More extravagantly, he called the Gettysburg address the “most perfect piece of American eloquence, and as noble and pathetic and appropriate as the oration of Pericles over the Peloponnesian dead.”233 The speech won over some who had been critical of Lincoln’s rhetoric. In August, Charles King Newcomb, a Rhode Island Emersonian, bemoaned the president’s “want of eloquence,” but on November 23, after reading the Gettysburg Address, he concluded that “Lincoln is, doubtless, the greatest orator of the age: a point not now seen generally.”234 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., thought the speech showed that Lincoln had “a capacity for rising to the demands of the hour which we should not expect from orators or men of the schools.”235
Edward Everett added his voice to the chorus of praise, writing with customary graciousness to Lincoln the day after the ceremony: “Permit me … to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the Cemetery. 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.”236 Lincoln told a friend that “he had never received a compliment he prized more highly.”237 Equally gracious, the president replied to Everett: “In our respective parts yesterday, 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. Of course I knew Mr. Everett would not fail; and yet, while the whole discourse was eminently satisfactory, and will be of great value, there were passages in it which trancended my expectation. The point made against the theory of the general government being only an agency, whose principals are the States, was new to me, and, as I think, is one of the best arguments for the national supremacy. The tribute to our noble women for their angel-ministering to the suffering soldiers, surpasses, in its way, as do the subjects of it, whatever has gone before.”238
(Privately, Lincoln expressed a less favorable view of Everett. Shortly after the orator’s death, he remarked: “I think Edward Everett was very much overrated. He hasn’t left any enduring monument.”239 To a foreign visitor, Lincoln described his standard of judgment in oratory: “It is very common in this country to find great facility of expression, and common, though not so common, to find great lucidity of thought. The combination of the two faculties in one person is uncommon indeed; but whenever you do find it, you have a great man.”)240
Some Democrats criticized the Gettysburg Address for injecting politics into a solemn, nonpartisan occasion. Samuel Medary of the Columbus, Ohio, Crisis sneered that “the President read a mawkish harrangue about this ‘war for freedom’ of the negro by the destruction of the liberties of American citizens.”241 The leading Democratic journal of the Midwest, the Chicago Times, called it “an offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity” and added that the “cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly flat and dishwattery remarks of the man who has to be pointed out as the President of the United States.”242 The Gettysburg Weekly Patriot and Union expressed similar contempt: “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 they shall be no more repeated or thought of.”243
Democrats criticized most vehemently the implication that the war was being fought, at least in part, to free the slaves. (Alhough Lincoln did not say so explicitly, that was the evident meani
ng of his references to equality and a “new birth of freedom.”) “We submit that Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the men who were slain at Gettysburg,” protested the Chicago Times. “They gave their lives to maintain the old government, and the old constitution and Union.”244 After citing passages in the Constitution alluding to slavery, the editor argued that “Mr. Lincoln occupies his present position by virtue of this constitution, and is sworn to the maintenance and enforcement of these provisions. It was to uphold this constitution, and the Union created by it, that our officers and soldiers gave their lives at Gettysburg. How dare he, then, standing on their graves, misstate the cause for which they died, and libel the statesmen who founded the government? They were men possessing too much self-respect to declare negroes were their equals, or were entitled to equal privileges.”245 The New York World maintained that “the Constitution not merely does not say one word about equal rights, but expressly admits the idea of inequality of human rights.”246 The Keene, New Hampshire, Cheshire Republican indignantly declared: “If it was to establish negro equality that our soldiers lost their lives, Mr. Lincoln should have said so before. These soldiers won the day at Gettysburg under the noble impulse that they were contending for the Constitution and the Union.”247
Democrats also objected to what they considered poor taste in Lincoln’s opening sentence. It was “questionable,” said the New York World, to represent “the ‘fathers’ in the stages of conception and parturition.”248 Similarly, the Boston Daily Courier protested against the “obstetric allusion.”249 The London Times correspondent said “[a]nything more dull and commonplace it wouldn’t be easy to produce.”250
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2 Page 103
