Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech on Nov. 19, 1863, to a crowd of roughly 15,000 dignitaries, mourners and regular citizens who assembled in Gettysburg, Pa., for the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, the resting place of 3,500 Union casualties of the Civil War’s most famous battle, which took place in July of that year.
“At 273 words, some in the audience mentioned that the speech seemed to be over before they knew it had started, but the Gettysburg Address was to have a lasting impact on the American consciousness,” says Civil War scholar Randall Miller, Ph.D., professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg the day prior to the dedication by a special train and went to the house of his host David Willis, the man who invited him to offer “a few appropriate remarks” at the dedication.
According to Miller, while popular accounts have Lincoln hurriedly scribbling the speech on the back of an envelope during the train ride from Washington, the opposite is true.
“He knew that his words would be heavily scrutinized, so he thought deeply about his comments, which he began writing in the White House days before the event,” Miller says. “But he was a very careful editor, and he continued revising the speech up to the last minute.”
On the day he was to deliver his address, Lincoln took an early morning tour of part of the battlefield, an experience, Miller says, that must have had a powerful effect on the president. The proof can be found in what’s missing in the first draft of the speech.
“If we look at the Nicolay copy of the speech, which is considered to be the version from which he read that day, the words ‘under God’ are not there,” says Miller. “But newspaper reporters and others who were present recorded Lincoln saying ‘that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.’”
Miller says this ad lib, which is included in every ensuing draft of the address, added spiritual depth to a speech that was already profound, and was probably motivated by Lincoln’s emotional response to all that took place during his brief stay in Gettysburg. “Perhaps his tour of the battlefield, and his encounter with its physicality of sacrifice and death, was the biggest influence on his psyche that day,” Miller adds.
The author or editor of more than 20 books on the Civil War, slavery, the American South, Reconstruction, religion and a host of other topics, Miller is co-editor of Lincoln and Leadership: Military, Political and Religious Decision Making (Fordham University Press, 2012). He can be reached for comment at [email protected], 610-660-1748, or by calling University Communications at 610-660-3240.
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