The Gospel of Gettysburg: The Story Behind the Story of the Gettysburg Address

On this episode of Our American Stories, our host, Lee Habeeb shares the story behind the story of Lincoln's most important words—the Gettysburg Address.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story behind the story of Lincoln's greatest speech, the Gettysburg Address,
And we rely a lot on a terrific book called
The Gettysburg Gospel by Hungarian born historian Gebor Barrett, who
was the director at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College.

(00:34):
And I have a particular love affair with Gettysburg because
my dad went to college there, and I have walked
the battlegrounds and taken trips all the way down to
Vicksburg with my dad. And now the story behind the
story of the Gettysburg Address. He arrived in the small

(00:57):
Pennsylvania town on November eighteenth, eighteen sixty three, a day
before he was to give one of his few national addresses.
He wasn't alone. Gettysburg population at the time was less
than three thousand, but nearly fifteen thousand people would gather
the very next day at the official dedication ceremony, but

(01:18):
the national cemetery on the site of one of the
bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. President
Abraham Lincoln arrived early because he wanted to see the battlefield,
to see in person what he had only seen before
on maps and official reports. He wanted to see the
ground and walk the ground. It is said that it

(01:39):
is a place, if you let it, where the land
will speak to you. It spoke to Lincoln. He visited
the battlefields by carriage with only a few people, wandering
the grounds for hours. Only four months earlier, in early July,
and even larger gathering of humanity made its way to
those very same battlefield. General Robert E. Lee showed up

(02:05):
with seventy five thousand men, General George Mead with one
hundred thousand. Three days later. Gettysburg was the site of
the worst man made disaster in American history. The first
chapter of Gabor Barrett's remarkable book, The Gospel of Gettysburg
described what the small town was like in the weeks

(02:27):
after the fighting ended. Stench fills the air. Excrement from
perhaps one hundred and eighty thousand men and more than
seventy thousand horses left behind. There are thousands of flies,
millions dead men, barely covered in shallow graves, a nurse,

(02:48):
rites of carcasses steaming in the sun. When strangers approached
the town, the odors of the battlefield attack them, long
before they get there. Perhaps no one wrote more eloquently
about the carnage. According to bor It than a volunteer
nurse from Philadelphia, Eliza Farnham.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
The whole town is one vast hospital. It is absolutely inconceivable.
The dead and dying and wounded torn to pieces in
every way. Moans, shrieks, weeping and prayer fill houses, the barns,

(03:37):
the tents, the fields, the woods, the whole area, the
land itself seems to wail nothing but suffering sights, sounds, smells,
unbearable horror, the piles of limb stripping blood, the dying,

(04:03):
the dead, hell on earth.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
It was a brutal battle, with over eighty thousand casualties,
but it was also a pivotal battle. General Lee was
hoping a loss at Gettysburg, just a short distance from
a great northern city like Philadelphia, might be enough to
prompt northerners to call it quits and turn Lincoln out
in the upcoming election in eighteen sixty four. President Lincoln, too,

(04:30):
understood the importance of the speech he was about to give.
He understood that the American people were sick and tired
of the bloodshed that continued day after day, year after year.
What was Lincoln trying to accomplish with his short address? Again,
I quote Gabor bore It. He was trying to tell
the American people why the war must go on, why

(04:54):
it mattered, and why it was worthwhile, why the United
States had to be saved. The speech is not simply
a benediction or a blessing on the dead. It is
a call to action. It's telling Americans, this is who
we are. It's worth fighting for and dying for. President

(05:17):
Lincoln's address followed was supposed to be, by all accounts,
the real Gettysburg address, that by former US Senator Ann
Harvard College president Edward Everett, which clocked in at nearly
two hours and contained thirteen thousand, six hundred and seventy words,
all forgotten. Then Lincoln rose. As David McCullough pointed out

(05:39):
in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War, a local
photographer was taking his time focusing. Presumably the photographer thought
Lincoln could be counted on to go on for a while,
But Lincoln spoke just two hundred and sixty nine words.
As he was heading back to his seat. The photographer
had just opened the shutter. There were no pictures of

(06:03):
Lincoln giving his most famous address. The address was not famous,
though when it was finished, a lot of newspapers didn't
even mention it. Those that did gave the speech a
mixed reception. Republican newspapers praised it, and Democrats viewed it
as the beginning of Lincoln's reelection campaign, belittling or ignoring

(06:24):
it all together. One Democrat newspaper called the speech a
mawkish harangue. The speech was pretty much forgotten until the
eighteen eighties. This was before the age of radio, TV
and YouTube. But as Gettysburg increasingly became a symbol of
reconciliation and reunion between North and South, Lincoln's address took

(06:48):
on more and more meeting. Why will the Gettysburg Address
be forever remembered again? I quote Gabor Borat. The radical
aspect of the speech began with Lincoln's assertion that the
Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution, was the true
expression of the founding father's intentions for their new nation.

(07:11):
At that time, many white slave owners had declared themselves
to be true Americans, pointing to the fact that the
Constitution did not prohibit slavery. According to Lincoln, the nation
formed in seventeen seventy six was dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal, an interpretation that was

(07:32):
radical at the time but is now taken for granted.
Lincoln's historic Address redefined the Civil War as a struggle
not just for the Union, but for the principle of
human equality. Lincoln, under the very worst of circumstances, gave
a speech that will be remembered for all time. Hundreds

(07:54):
of thousands of Americans fought and died to make America
a more complete union in those long four years, a
more just and free nation, and now here to do
a reading of the Gettysburg Intress, brought to us by
the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Forced Corn. Seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that allban are created equal. Now we
are engaged in a great Civil war, testing whether that nation,

(08:41):
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We've come to dedicate a portion of that field as
a final resting place for those who here gave their lives.

(09:01):
That that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this. But in a larger
sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, We cannot handle
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here have consecrated it far above our poor power to

(09:25):
add or detracted. The world will little nod 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.

(09:47):
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us. And from these other
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we
here highly resolved that these days shall not have died

(10:10):
in vain, that this nation under God shall have a
new birth of freedom, and the government of the people
by the people, for the people shall not perish from
the earth.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
The story of the story behind the Gettysburg address here
on our American Stories