Originally appeared in the Spring 2015 edition of Miamian Magazine.

MIAMI HISTORY PROFESSOR SHARES STORY BEHIND GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

By Jessica Barga ’15

ABRAHAM LINCOLN is a paradox. Lincoln, the president, is widely considered one of the greatest figures in American history, preserving the Union under tremendous pressures and sparking the process that ended slavery in the United States.

In contrast, Lincoln, the man, with his humble log-cabin origins, earned a reputation as a good stump speaker but a poor orator. Because of this, he almost wasn’t invited to speak at the Nov. 19, 1863, dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa.

Yes, what is perhaps the most famous speech in American memory almost wasn’t.

Lincoln was judged “at best simply not suited for the elevated proceedings being planned, and at worst might bring the tone down to the level of a frontier tavern,” Miami associate professor Martin Johnson explains in his bookWriting the Gettysburg Address.

Johnson, who teaches history on Miami’s Hamilton Campus, received the acclaimed Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize in 2014 for his book. Throughout its 336 pages, he examines the differences between the address Lincoln gave at Gettysburg and the one memorized by millions, an address Lincoln reworked and polished months later.

A GRUDGING INVITATION
In the autumn of 1863, the Pennsylvania state government planned a dedication of the cemetery four and a half months after Union armies defeated the Confederacy in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The somber ceremony was to be “one of the grandest and most imposing affairs ever beheld in the United States,” according to 32-year-old Gettysburg lawyer David Wills, the ceremony’s organizer, who owned a big house on the town square.

As Pennsylvania’s governor was not an avid Lincoln proponent, the president’s invitation to attend — much less to speak — came only 17 days before the dedication.

Even then, Lincoln’s role was simply to make “a few appropriate remarks” after keynote speaker Edward Everett finished his two-hour oration, Johnson says. A 69-year-old former U.S. senator and secretary of state, Everett was the most celebrated orator of the day.

Lincoln’s decision to go did not come easily. He would be leaving behind a sick son and a wife still grieving over the loss of another son the year before. But he would soon be up for re-election, and even his nomination as the Republican candidate was not assured, Johnson says. He needed to be seen out among the people.

AMONG THOUSANDS OF FRESH GRAVES
Despite a popular myth that began in 1882 and persists today, Lincoln did not scribble his speech on scraps of paper while on the train. Instead, he began it in the White House a few days before leaving, according to records that Johnson has studied.

With his initial one-page draft in hand, Lincoln set off for Gettysburg on Nov. 18 and began a pilgrimage that would shape his words. He looked “sallow, sunken-eyed, thin, careworn,” Johnson relays. By the time he delivered his speech, he was quite unwell. Doctors later diagnosed his illness as smallpox.

Upon arrival, Lincoln stayed at Wills’ home, working on his speech well into the night with the help of Secretary of State William Seward, whom he admired as having a way with words. In the morning, he visited the battlefield and makeshift cemetery with its thousands of fresh graves.

Moved by the site, Lincoln made additional handwritten edits to the now two-page speech.

“Once he was there, I think he felt much more strongly the sacrifices of the soldiers in Gettysburg, and I think that brought a lot of emotional power to the speech,” Johnson says. “That’s where you can see Lincoln joining together his thoughts from Washington and Gettysburg.”

A SPEECH FOR EVERY GENERATION
And yet, what Lincoln said after his “Four score and seven years ago” introduction that afternoon was slightly different from the speech we recite today.In fact, it wasn’t until February 1864 that Lincoln penned the version we now see reprinted in books and engraved on the Lincoln Memorial. Called the Bliss Copy after the family who owned it, it is the last known copy written in Lincoln’s hand.

As for the crowd’s reaction to the speech that day, some say the audience was disappointed, but Johnson disagrees.

While the “cult of the address,” as he calls it, did not become pervasive until the late 1800s, Lincoln’s comments seemed well-received at the time, garnering praise from simple observers and famous figures alike, including poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

“For American memory, as speeches go, this one would be at least among the top three,” Johnson says. “I’m not sure that any other speech has yet made it to the level of American civil religion the way the Gettysburg Address has.” He attributes part of the speech’s success and endurance to its dynamic nature, allowing it to be interpreted differently and for a different purpose by each generation, from World War I to Sept. 11, 2001.

For Johnson, who has been researching the Civil War for nearly a decade, Lincoln’s speech crescendos with the line “a new birth of freedom.” While the rest of the speech did not break much new ground in terms of content, Johnson says, this line was something new and different, something Lincoln would not have said in any other context.

“It suggests this project of freedom that we started in 1776 is never going to end,” Johnson says. “We will always have new vistas to open up for freedom.”