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At noon on November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln boarded a special presidential train running north. Ensconced in the plush presidential car of the B&O Railroad, Lincoln traveled to Baltimore, where he transferred to another rail station and headed west. With him were his half-finished comments to be given the next day in dedicating a new cemetery in the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. By early morning Lincoln had completed the brief address of some 270 words, quickly wrote out another version, and gave the speech following a parade, Edward Everett's featured two-hour oration, and musical presentations.
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The sprawling audience at Gettysburg seemed uncertain about how to respond to Lincoln's two-to-three-minute address. As many as 20,000 visitors had swarmed into the town, overwhelming its 2,500 residents. Applause interrupted Lincoln several times and followed his speech, but listeners appeared more taken with Everett's soaring oratory than with the president's brief, poetic reflections. Lincoln wondered if he had misspoken. The lack of attention paid his Gettysburg Address in leading American newspapers and the subdued responses of most who read the address seemed to confirm his reservations. But Everett's warm congratulatory note to Lincoln provided needed assurance. The orator told the president: "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."
Although pressed for time and unable to finish his address before leaving Washington, Lincoln gave considerable thought to appropriate words for the solemn occasion. Everett's being the featured speaker, Lincoln's own role as a last-minute add-on, and the need to dedicate the new burial ground for soldiers who lost their lives at Gettysburg the previous July predetermined much of the tone and content of Lincoln's comments. But he reflected extensively about what he would say: to honor the dead and to speak of the horrendous conflict that must be pressed and won. In a much larger realm, he would speak of liberty, equality, and democracy, urging his listeners to dedicate themselves and their country to the "unfinished business" facing them, so that they could experience a "new birth of freedom" and that a "government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth."
In The Gettysburg Gospel, Gabor Boritt, a leading Lincoln scholar, tells an appealing story of these events and others that preceded and followed. He adopts a chronological organization in his revealing narrative. In the riveting opening chapter he describes the destruction and chaos that engulfed Gettysburg after the battles of early July 1863. Rotting animal carcasses and decaying human remains were strewn throughout the small town. The filth and stench sickened residents and visitors. Amputated arms and legs were stacked like sticks of firewood under bloody cutting tables. Women as nurse-angels, churches, and nuns helped government doctors and sanitation officials who were overwhelmed by their task.
By September, as the town bit by bit recovered from the carnage, its residents began calling for a cemetery and preserved battlefields to commemorate the path-breaking battles. The result was the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg. On November 19, 1863, throngs of visitors crowded into the small town to hear Everett's stirring speech, see President Lincoln, and walk through battlefields where perhaps as many as 10,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives. Boritt sets the scene of the dedication ceremonies skillfully, including the carousing and sometimes tipsy crowds that regaled the president and other visiting political dignitaries.
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