The Gettysburg Legacy

One of the most revered speeches of all time still widely quoted and memorized today is the Gettysburg Address. It was meant to be just a speech delivered at a cemetery dedication. It was only 272 words long and lasted less than two minutes to deliver. According to Connors, the reason that we do not have an official picture of Abraham Lincoln standing at the podium was because the official photographer delayed setting up his equipment thinking that the speech would take a while, but by the time he was ready, the speaker was already walking back to his seat. Since its writing the speech is now one hundred and fifty years old. The question that remains is how can a one hundred and fifty year old cemetery dedication speech still resonate in the world today?

The National Cemetery of Gettysburg, was the place where “one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War” (History.com) occurred. The date for the ceremony was set to October 23, 1863. Edward Everett was contacted and asked to come and be the main speaker, but he refused unless the date could be changed to November 18. David Willis agreed and postponed the ceremony to November 19, 1863. After he had already found the main speaker, David Willis respectfully invited Abraham Lincoln to come and say a few remarks of encouragement to the people. Lincoln started to write the speech even before he accepted the invitation, but when he did accept his speech was still unfinished.

Here is a small view of what the battle was like. General Robert E. Lee was the commanding officer of the Confederate Army met on the battlefield with General George G. Meade the commanding officer of the Army of the Potomac. The casualties were immense on both sides. The statistics show that 23,000 died on the Union side and 28,000 on the Confederate side. These numbers show how much sadness and agony there must have been on that