American History Hit - The Gettysburg Address

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

What makes the Gettysburg Address one of the most famous speeches in history? Did Lincoln really write it on the train? How did the audience in the Soldiers' National Cemetery respond?In this episode, Don is joined once again by Glenn LaFantasie to examine the words, circumstances and reception of this much quoted oration.Professor Glenn LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of History at Western Kentucky UniversityProduced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The view of the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial is magnificent. The waters of the great reflecting pool ripple below in the breeze,

stretching 2,000 feet towards the stolid granite and bronze memorial to those who fought in World War II. Onward past the Washington Monument, towering 555 feet into the sky, and then, at the furthest distance, the United States Capitol, in all its architectural grandeur. Upon these expansive steps stood Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he delivered his I Have a Dream speech. Marion Anderson once famously sang here. And for just over a century since the memorial's dedication in 1922, countless millions have climbed these steps, passing through the enormous stone columns to come face to face with the man himself, or rather his 19-foot-tall likeness. Abraham Lincoln seated in stony contemplative silence.

To the right, engraved into the smooth wall surface of the North Chamber, are the legendary words of Lincoln's second inaugural speech. But look left to the South Chamber, and you'll see the 271 words of the Gettysburg Address, carved into white marble, forever immortalized, and ingrained into the perpetual memory of a nation. Hi, everyone, it's Don Wildman, and thanks for listening to American History Hit. I'd have you.

This year, 2023, marks the 160th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address in 1863. Four and a half months after Lee's army was defeated that past July, Lincoln arrived in autumn in Gettysburg to deliver his eloquent, if oh so brief, speech in that same location. I sat down and wondered how many speeches in American political oratory, we can even recall, much discuss in detail. George Washington's inauguration, its fair roll address. Jefferson wrote a certain declaration, but not sure you can call that oratory. MLK Jr., I had a dream. JFK, ask not what your country can do for you. Great moments from great speakers, and of course, there are many more, depending on your definition of great. But Abraham Lincoln's address on those scarred battlegrounds being dedicated as a national cemetery for fallen soldiers. Well, this oratory stands apart from the

rest. More than beautiful words full of meaning, it is an invocation, a consecration. It's also a call to action for a nation divided, still bleeding from its open wounds, that the sacrifice of those many lives could be a kind of baptism, a rebirth of the American nation, if only the living could find within themselves the same strength and purpose demonstrated by the dead. The Gettysburg address is 272 words long, but it's a lot. And we'll parse it out now, in Constructed by Civil War historian and educator, Glenn LaFantasy of Western Kentucky University. Listeners may recall that Glenn and I did an episode months back on the Battle of Gettysburg, one of our best episodes, in my humble opinion.

And remarkably, he's come back. Welcome, Glenn. Thank you, Don. I'm glad to be back. And I, too, think it's one of your best episodes. Absolutely. I love the Gettysburg Address. I say that from the heart.

I think nothing stiffens my patriotic resolve more than standing next to that. French statue within the Lincoln Memorial, reading those words right off the wall. You've written a lot about the speech. You've taught it. Where do you begin discussing it? Well, I start usually with the background to the speech and how Lincoln was invited to attend the ceremonies to dedicate a soldier's national cemetery, what would turn out to be the first National Cemetery in the nation's history. And so the background is that he was invited to attend these ceremonies, but kind of as an afterthought in the sense that nobody felt it was necessary or required that Lincoln, any president, that the president should attend this dedication.

He wanted to be there, right? He wanted to be there. And luckily, for him, he received an invitation to deliver a few appropriate remarks in dedicating the cemetery. Now, he conceived that this should be something more than a mere dedication. In other words, he didn't intend to go to Gettysburg the Civil War's bloody battle field and simply say, I dedicate this cemetery in the name of the United States of America. I mean, that's what he could have done. But instead, he wrote a speech that had several different purposes behind it. And among those purposes, the one that resonates probably around the world is the fact that he was defending the idea of democracy and pleading not only to,

to the audience there, but to the nation, and he could not know that it would become also people around the world, that democracy was worth it, that democracy had to be defended. You couldn't take it for granted. And that's one reason why he said the dead had not died in vain, because he wanted to emphasize that their sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Union soldiers at Gettysburg, meant something more, and that more was the defense of democracy. I think it's the brevity of the speech, which is so remarkable in that both it's a less is more, the greatest statement on less is more.

But it's also that every one of those phrases is so intentional and plays a part in the machine of his message. It's remarkable how you can source all of the phrases back to other sources that may or may not have been consulted. This man at this point in his life may have had so much in his brilliant brain that he was able to access this stuff, you know, scribbling down on an envelope. Who knows? That's what has been written about so much is the essential deliberate nature of the speech. It works remarkably well. Yes, indeed. And it's very deliberate.

As a matter of fact, he chose his own. words wisely. But I think you're right. I think the phrases that he borrowed from Scripture, which are littered throughout this very short speech among the 272 words, those phrases from scripture, his ability in phraseology, one notices a series of triplets of the people, by the people, for the people, being the most famous. And I think he was very consciously trying, to assume a literary style that his spoken words never quite achieved. He being a very humble, backwoods guy from Illinois. But these words in this speech achieved eloquence.

And as we said earlier, resonance that continues today. Let's discuss those words a little bit later. I want to literally call this thing up and talk through it and read through it. But first, I just want to review the historic context of this. I mean, Gettysburg, for anyone who doesn't remember, is a enormously pivotal battle, of course, but also incredibly bloody. Fifty-one thousand casualties in these three days of battle that happened there. This is, again, four and a half months later. They are in the act of reinterring the dead, who were kind of buried where they were at the end of the battle there, to sort of create a national cemetery, as you say, the first one of its kind. And all of this is a very good moment for a lot of leaders, but certainly the president, to take stock of where they are at this moment. How much, this is my main question, how much was Lincoln aware, four and a half months later that the war had turned, that they were on the upswing at this point? He was aware. How much he was aware, I don't know.

But the signs and the signals were all there for someone as smart as Lincoln. and this victory on northern soil, which proved to be an incredible morale booster for the North, because it's coupled with the victory of Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, which happened on July 4th, 1863. So Gettysburg and Vicksburg coming together was very important for the northern public and for support of the war. I ask because the themes of the speech are so reflective. They're being delivered in such a way that he's talking as much to the nation looking forward as he is in consecrating the dead where they are. That's kind of the magic of the speech, right? Absolutely.

You know, and in the speech, he says, we cannot consecrate this ground. Well, he did. Yeah. That's what the speech became. And he achieved a positive out of a negative statement, which he should. is really interesting. And perhaps he knew what he was doing. I'm not sure about that. But nevertheless, yeah, those words are deliberate, extremely important. And he put a great deal of effort into this speech. He used to be that historians said, well, no, he wrote it on the back of an envelope.

Well, that's simply not true. That's been debunked for quite a long time now by historians. but in fact he began the speech in Washington at the White House, drafted a portion of it, and then finished the entire thing the night before the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg itself. And he stayed up rather late, we know, doing that and composing. And then he went and sought out his secretary of state, William Seward, to check over the speech and see if there were any changes. that should be made. And Seward, who was very tired at this point, said, no, he didn't want to

change anything. He thought it was fine. And so we have all thought it's fine ever since. That's for real. The ceremony itself on the day on November 19th, 1863, will be dominated by Edward Everett, the famous orator of the time. I mean, this guy was a rock star in the public speaking arena and knew it. He was being hired to be that day. And he made. what becomes a two-hour long speech, which, you know, was not out of the ordinary in those days. That's why you got somebody like Everett to do his thing. But this all is before the President of States stands up and does his. It's an incredible dichotomy, you know, or juxtaposition of these two different kinds of speeches. Tell me about Everett. Let's just give a little color to this man.

Yes, well, a Harvard graduate from Massachusetts, a very learned man. And as you say he rises in the pantheon of American oratory within his own time. He becomes the most famous American speaker, orator. And he did indeed well know it. I had an ego that often demonstrated that. And he was a phenomenal speaker. He spoke for two hours at Gettysburg. Modern folks, of course, if we were to listen to a politician or any orator for two hours, we would certainly lose interest. But Everett had them for the most part in the palm of his hand, except toward the end, people started dwindling away. His audience started dwindling away. But once he finished, they mozied back to the speaker's platform, knowing that Lincoln would be

next and expecting that Lincoln would deliver some massive speech that would go on for a while. you know, would reflect the importance of the battle that took place at Gettysburg. Everett's speech was entirely focused on the strategy and tactics of the battle. He had toward the battlefield. He was pointed, his guide pointed him to the significant places, little round top, peach orchard and so forth. And so then he narrated for his audience, the aspects of the battle. Fascinating. I've always wondered about that. I mean, and that's 13. thousand words he speaks and most of that is about kind of retelling the battle of gettisburg huh yeah yeah and it's so interesting as you said earlier the

juxtaposition between everett's lengthy speech and lincoln's very brief speech is apparent and was apparent at the time to to everyone and there was a lot of negative reaction to it as a matter of fact there was um especially for the audience, which may have consisted of as many as 15,000 people. Now, Lincoln was good at projecting his voice. He had a high tenor voice, and we're told from sources that his voice could carry a remarkable distance. So many of those 15,000 did indeed hear him, and we have eyewitness accounts galore, actually, about the speech and what the people heard. You're right that there was negative reaction that came from the press, particularly. But in those days, newspapers, as today, in some cases,

were closely aligned with political parties. So the Democratic newspapers didn't like his speech. The Republican newspapers loved his speech. And it's the same old story of partisan division. but there are legends that Lincoln thought the speech didn't work at all. But the source of that is questionable. It comes from Ward Hill Lehman, who was a U.S. Marshal in Washington, D.C., and he was Lincoln's bodyguard. And it was Lehman who said that Lincoln thought it didn't work. And that's a doubtful source. There's that famous image, the photograph, that we actually see Lincoln sitting in the

midst of. You can't really tell because of the angle of the picture how the real layout is, but it has the appearance of everybody in this audience on top of each other and on top of the speakers who are barely visible above the heads of the crowd. Have you ever seen any other record of how that setup was arranged? Yeah, there's been a breakdown of what we're actually looking at when we can see Lincoln sitting down. In fact, he's finished his speech and he's in the process of sitting down. The camera wing caught completely by surprise, but clicks the shutter and does get the picture. Yeah, historians have broken out who's on the platform. They've identified so many of the people by microscopic enhancement of this photograph. The enhancement actually

was first done in the 1950s, and a woman at the National Archives actually identified. identified Lincoln in the picture. But after that, in the time till now, there has been more and more scholarship and more of more attention paid to that picture. Another photograph of the procession that led from the center of town to cemetery hill, where the soldier's cemetery was located, there's a new procession photograph in which several people have seen a guy in a top hat, and they do believe that that's Lincoln. So depending upon one's point of view and interpretation, there might be a second picture of Lincoln at Gettysburg. I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

The record of the speech itself is of interest. There are copies made of this, literally the Bliss copy. You know, there's a whole list of them. But about five of them. And these are, again, made after the fact, after the speech has been declared effective. And suddenly it's of scholarly important. And so people end up getting this from the horse's mouth or are they remembering it? Where does this record come from?

Well, it comes largely from Lincoln himself. And by the way, Edward Everett was completely impressed by the speech. And he wrote Lincoln a note that said, and I'm paraphrasing here, your eloquence exceeds my own at that dedication. And you said in a few words what I could not say. and didn't say in 13,000 words. Right, two hours, yeah. Yeah.

Lincoln was overjoyed by that note. I mean, that made it stay as it would for anybody. He knows how to, I mean, at this point, he has long been a skilled orator, of course, but now he's in the pantheon of the greats, and he knows how impressive these words can really, or how effective these words can really be, and that words really matter, and they can actually instill action in this. Let's talk about those words, and we can talk through a bit of this. I mean, that's one of the beauties of the speeches.

It's so short, we can move through the text pretty quickly. 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. Right off the bat, you're talking about a perspective on history here. He's placing this tragic event, this difficult military victory, in the context of the whole nation's history, right? Yeah, absolutely. He's turning back to the founders, and he's praising them for their achievement. Lincoln was exceptionally fond of the founding fathers, and they come up often in his speeches and in his letters. So there's little surprise that he should mention them. But in the manner that he does, it's so striking because that four score and seven years ago comes from the Psalms in the Old Testament.

And then the use of fathers is another potentially biblical, scriptural reference. What's also interesting is this is the beginning of another triplet in the speech, and that is he starts with a reference to the past, and then he talks about the present in terms of the sacrifice the soldiers have made at Gettysburg. But he stakes the ground out that this is about preserving the essential nature of the country. The democratic spirit of this country is what this battle was about. That all men are created equal. Now, and I'll go on, now we are engaged in a great civil war. Remember, for the audience, there's a long way to go in this civil war still, you know, just

because we wanted to gettysburg, didn't mean this was over. 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 battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a port. of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do so. The word I've heard, I've seen this many times, dedication, devotion, these D words he uses literatively, I guess, but also the meaning is important. Yeah. What he essentially achieves, one of his purposes, is to define the very meaning of the Civil War for Americans. What does this battle mean to the United States of America? What does it mean to all Americans? And he's telling his audience and knowing that the newspapers are going to report this speech, he's telling them this is what the Civil War means.

And it means preserving the nation. Now, interestingly, there is not a single reference to the Union in this speech. Instead, he calls it the nation. A new nation. A new nation. Yeah. That he expects to be reborn, another biblical reference to Matthew. This is where you wonder how genius is this man.

Was it a mistake or, you know, a fortunate mistake? The word dedication links it with the word dead, which he uses many times as well. And he is conflating these two ideas. He's converting this notion of mourning the dead with the idea of rebranding. birth of dedicating this land to a new nation. It's really fascinating. And this is where you wonder, is it hindsight's 21? You know, like, how much did he really know he was doing this? Well, I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And I think he said exactly what he wanted to say. And I suspect, rather than him thinking this was a failure, I think he knew that this was a success.

He achieved what he wanted to achieve. It's interesting in terms of the audience response. on November 19th because eyewitnesses tell a very different story, depending on the witness. And that is, the AP reporter, the Associated Press reporter there at the time, took down the speech verbatim. But within his verbatim account, there's square bracketed words like applause throughout the speech. Later, that reporter admitted that he simply added those later because he felt that it would be effective to the reader to know that there was applause when there probably was no applause at all and no visible reaction by the crowd. Lincoln sat down quickly after finishing it. A lot of people didn't know it was over that were standing in the crowd. And so the eyewitness accounts

vary. Some say there was applause. Some say there were cheers. Some people say that there was no sound at all. Some say, well, there was applause at the end. And it's a really fascinating aspect, historical issue, as to what was it these people heard and experienced? And why are there so many different accounts of the reaction of the audience? Glenn, let me go through the last bit. This is a little longer than the first two, which I guess was also part of the plan here. But again, I want to underscore the fact that there's so many related words sound-wise. Just as somebody who does this for a living, I'm in awe of Abraham Lincoln, how he uses sound and syllables to actually stitch together a meaning, a broader meaning. So here we go.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, and that's the operative word, 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. 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. He is really working hard at explaining something to this audience, that they have done something that we cannot do. We are not equal to what they have done, but we can try. Exactly. And it's a call. Well, it's the beginning of a call in the speech for people to dedicate themselves to the preservation of the nation and to make sure that the people of the North and the people of the South, that they're aware that this is America's greatest trial, and it's going to take sacrifice.

Not only these dead that were laid out in front of him as he made this speech, and in fact, some of the graves had not been finished as yet, but it wasn't only just the dead. He's coming close to saying it's the living who must sacrifice. It's the living who must dedicate and consecrate. In these last several sentences, the most famous part of the speech, that these dead shall not have died in vain is contained. And let's read up to that and end this. 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 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. I'm having chills as I read it. It's amazing how present this speech is. It's incredible how he has cut to the quick of what it means to be American. Yeah. And I think in our modern era, this speech and perhaps others is taken for granted. But you've had the right emotional response to this. It's the response he wanted you to have, and you've just described it. And when I first learned about the Gettysburg address as a kid in elementary school, I had the same reaction to it. I thought, man, this is

different, this is important. These are really stirring words, emotional words, even. And, of course, like other American children, at least of my generation, I had to memorize the address, recite it in front of class, word for word. And this was taking place in Lincoln, Rhode Island in my fifth grade class. There you go. This picture was above the blackboard. I had George Washington, but whichever would pick your founding father. For me, I have always said that the civil war was the beginning of the nation I grew up in. That's stretching the truth. But I mean, for me, the values that are expressed in the speech are what creates the modern version of this country. So it was very much a rebirth, in my opinion. How much did the South pay attention

to this speech? Well, they diminished it and did not like it as far as press reactions went and, well, as far as individuals who wrote about it in their letters and their diaries. But some historians have interpreted the speech as also being directed toward the South. And in a sense of a little bit, in our modern expression, in your face. He's saying, this is what we're doing up here in the North. This is how we sacrifice for the preservation of this nation. And we're going to keep on doing it until there is a rebirth of freedom. Now, there, in those words, rebirth of freedom, historians believe there's a direct connection

to the Emancipation Proclamation. He's talking about freedom for everybody, freedom for all. He doesn't single out any particular constituency. All Americans deserve freedom. And that's quite striking. That's goose bump material. When you stop and think about it, this is a pledge on his part that he's going to do whatever it takes to ensure that this rebirth of freedom happens. Well, it's timeless, too. I mean, that's the incredible quality of the speeches that it can apply to so many eras of American history, even today. You know, what we're going through right now with the polarization politically and so forth is addressed by this as well. You know, how much can we overcome our own, you know, concerns or temporal natures to deal appropriately and respectfully with these higher ideals that have passed on to us and for which people have died. It applies today. Yes, it does. It translates into so many different levels of meaning, the meaning of the civil war, the meaning of democracy, the meaning of keeping the union, or as he says, nation together, preserving that nation, doing so because of a legacy that the founding fathers gave to all Americans. Save this country, save this nation, whatever you do, because we, the Founding fathers had made the effort and won a war to create these liberties and freedoms we all enjoy.

Sure. It's this sort of elastic nature of American democracy that it can be changed and can be altered that he is commenting on. This is a man who's had everything to do with changing the nation a fundamental way, but he's speaking of those founders with the great respect and adoration that he's carried throughout his entire life. You know, this nation was flawed, but now it is being repaired and and this goes on today. We're going to end there, but I invite listeners to return to these words. Boy, just read them instead of watching tonight's news. It's a tonic. The real stuff of American democracy and the thinking behind it you can find in Lincoln so often. Glenn, thank you so much for joining me again. I want to come back to you yet one more time and

talk about Vicksburg in the future, I hope. Oh, good. Well, thank you for having me. And it's been a real pleasure. It always is. I'm sounding like I'm a veteran of this podcast. I'm proud that you are now, twice, twice on. Glenn LaFantasy is a Richard Frock family professor of history at Western Kentucky University. Glenn, what's your new work coming up? It's a book called Our Union to Restore Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and the transformation of the United States.

Well, that sounds great. All right, we'll see you then when we talk about it. Thanks, Don. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements

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