Image: Archives New Zealand, via Wikimedia Commons.While the American Civil War began in April 1861 - with the first shots fired at Fort Sumter - it was in September 1862, after the battle of Antietam, that President Abraham Lincoln finally believed he had the victory he needed to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This is the last known copy of the speech which Lincoln himself wrote out, and the only one signed and dated by him, so this is why it is widely regarded as the most authentic. It is named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, the stepson of historian George Bancroft.īancroft asked Lincoln for a copy to use as a fundraiser for soldiers, but because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the speech was illegible and could not be reprinted, so Lincoln made another copy at Bliss’s request. It is this version which is found on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. However, the one which is viewed as the most authentic, and the most frequently reproduced, is the one known as the Bliss Copy. There are several written versions of the Gettysburg Address in existence. He may have been attempting to remind his listeners that he belonged to the frontier rather than to the East, the world of Washington and New York and Massachusetts. In writing and delivering a speech using such matter-of-fact language, Lincoln was being authentic and true to his roots. He wanted everyone, regardless of their education or intellect, to be able to understand his words. There is something democratic, in the broadest sense, about Lincoln’s choice of plain-spoken words and to-the-point sentences. Instead, he wanted to address people directly and simply, in plain language that would be immediately accessible and comprehensible to everyone. This is partly because Lincoln eschewed the high-flown allusions and wordy style of most political orators of the nineteenth century. Afterwards, Lincoln remarked that he had ‘failed’ in his duty to deliver a memorable speech, and some contemporary newspaper reports echoed this judgment, with the Chicago Times summarising it as a few ‘silly, flat and dishwatery utterances’ before hinting that Lincoln’s speech was an embarrassment, especially coming from so high an office as the President of the United States.īut in time, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would come to be regarded as one of the great historic American speeches. His speech lasted perhaps two minutes, contrasted with Everett’s two hours. Lincoln’s speech is just 268 words long, because he was intended just to wrap things up with a few concluding remarks. When he’d finished, his exhausted audience of some 15,000 people waited for their President to address them.
Four score and seven years ago full#
Everett’s speech was packed full of literary and historical allusions which were, one feels, there to remind his listeners how learned Everett was.
For example, on the day Lincoln delivered his famous address, he was not the top billing: the main speaker at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863 was not Abraham Lincoln but Edward Everett.Įverett gave a long – many would say overlong – speech, which lasted two hours. The mythical aura surrounding the Gettysburg Address, like many iconic moments in American history, tends to obscure some of the more surprising facts from us.
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