DEDICATIONS.

Each of these two speeches is the message of a leader: No. II shows the essentiality in facing a complicated problem in persuasion of selecting skilfully a central idea and an apt and striking illustration of it; No. I proves that even the speech which would have been satisfactory had it been merely a perfunctory fulfilling of part of a formal program may be turned into something which, for its thought and its phrase, will probably last as long as the language in which it was uttered.

I.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Gettysburg Address.

November 19, 1863.

["Mr. David Wills, of Gettysburg, first suggested the creation of a national cemetery on the battlefield, and under Gov. Curtin's direction and coöperation he purchased the land for Pennsylvania and other States interested, and superintended the improvements. . . . On Novem5 ber 2 Mr. Wills wrote the President a formal invitation to take part in the dedication." Edward Everett had been chosen to deliver the ora

tion.

"Mr. Lincoln had a little more than two weeks in which to prepare the remarks he might intend to make. It was a time when he was ex10 tremely busy, not alone with the important and complicated military affairs in the various armies, but also with the consideration of his annual message to Congress, which was to meet early in December. There was even great uncertainty whether he could take enough time from his pressing official duties to go to Gettysburg at all.

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20

...

There is no decisive record of when Mr. Lincoln wrote the first sentences of his proposed address. He probably followed his usual habit in such matters, using great deliberation in arranging his thoughts and molding his phrases mentally, waiting to reduce them to writing until they had taken satisfactory form.

There was much greater necessity for such precaution in this case, because the invitation specified that the address of dedication should only be a few appropriate remarks.' Brevity in speech and writing was one of Lincoln's marked characteristics; but in this instance there existed two other motives calculated to strongly support his natural inclinations. 25 One was that Mr. Everett would be certain to make a long address; the other, the want of opportunity even to think leisurely about what he might desire to say. All this strongly confirms the correctness of the statement made by the Hon. James Speed, in an interview printed in the 'Louisville Commercial,' in November, 1879, that the President told 30 him that the day before he left Washington he found time to write about half of his speech.' . . .

This portion of the manuscript begins with the line 'four score and

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seven years ago' and ends 'It is rather for us the living,' etc. The
whole of this first page-
nineteen lines - is written in ink in the Presi-
dent's strong, clear hand, without blot or erasure; and the last line is in
the following form, 'It is rather for us the living to stand here,' the
last three words being, like the rest, in ink. From the fact that this
sentence is incomplete, we may infer that at the time of writing it in
Washington the remainder of the sentence was also written in ink on
another piece of paper. But when, at Gettysburg on the morning of the
ceremonies, Mr. Lincoln finished his manuscript, he used a lead pencil
with which he crossed out the last three words of the first page, and 10
wrote above them in pencil 'we here be dedica,' at which point he took
up a new half sheet of paper. . . and on this he wrote, all in pencil,
the remainder of the word and of the first draft of the address, compris-
ing a total of nine lines and a half. The time occupied in this final
writing was probably about an hour, for it is not likely that he left the 15
breakfast table before nine o'clock, and the formation of the procession
began at ten. . . . It was fully noon before Mr. Everett began his ad-
dress, after which, for two hours he held the assembled multitude in
rapt attention with his eloquent description and argument, his polished
diction, his carefully studied and practised delivery.

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When he had concluded, and the band had performed the usual musical interlude, President Lincoln rose to fill the part assigned him in the program. It was entirely natural for every one to expect that this would consist of a few perfunctory words, the mere formality of official dedication. There is every probability that the assemblage regarded 25 Mr. Everett as the mouthpiece, the organ of expression of the thought and feeling of the hour, and took it for granted that Mr. Lincoln was there as a mere official figurehead, the culminating decoration, so to speak, of the elaborately planned pageant of the day. They were therefore totally unprepared for what they heard, and could not immediately 30 realize that his words, and not those of the carefully selected orator, were to carry the concentrated thought of the occasion like a trumpet peal to farthest posterity.

The newspaper records indicate that when Mr. Lincoln began to speak, he held in his hand the manuscript first draft of his address 35 which he had finished only a short time before. But it is the distinct recollection of the writer, who sat within a few feet of him, that he did not read from the written pages, though that impression was naturally left on many of his auditors. That it was not a mere mechanical reading is, however, more definitely confirmed by the circumstance that Mr. 40 Lincoln did not deliver the address in the exact form in which his first draft is written. Condensed from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, J. G. Nicolay, Century Magazine, XLVII, pp. 596–602.]

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FOURSCORE 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. 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 battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 10 that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate

consecrate

we cannot hallow- this ground.

-

we cannot

The brave

men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world 15 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. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re20 maining before us -that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for 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 25 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.