By Glenn D. Price glenn@pricefarrington.com PH: 425.451.3583
November 19, 2025 marks the 162nd anniversary of prairie lawyer and president of the United States Abraham Lincoln’s momentous Gettysburg Address, a speech that, to this day, provides insight and inspiration to the world.
Abraham Lincoln sat in Alexander Gardner’s photo studio in Washington D.C. shortly before delivering his address at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863. The full-face view was unusual, posed at the request of an artist who required a working model of Lincoln’s features.
America was in the midst of a bloody civil war. Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia invaded southern Pennsylvania in 1863 to seize a major northern city – Harrisburg, which is the capital of Pennsylvania, or perhaps Philadelphia – to bring Lincoln and the North to the negotiating table.
The two armies confronted each other on the rolling hills and orchards of the small town of Gettysburg in south-central Pennsylvania. Three fierce and bloody days, July 1-3, 1863, produced the most staggering toll of wounded, missing and dead of any battle in the Civil War — 51,000 casualties: 23,000 on the Union side; 28,000 on the Confederate; almost 10,000 dead in all.
The losses were enormous: 17,000 on the first day; 16,000 on the second. Day 3 saw a huge Confederate death march into direct Union fire, later to be known as Pickett’s Charge. 5,000 men were mowed down in the space of 90 terrible minutes. By nightfall it was over. The Union’s Army of the Potomac had successfully repelled Lee’s second invasion of the North.
The war would continue with great bloodshed for almost two more years, but the fierce and bloody battle of Gettysburg came to be recognized as the most significant battle, and the turning point, of the war.
The thousands of men killed in the battle were imperfectly identified and hastily buried in makeshift graves. After months of work cleaning up the devastation that remained after the battle, reburial of Union soldiers began on October 17.
Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin had commissioned local attorney David Wills to purchase land for a proper burial site for the deceased Union soldiers. Wills acquired 17 acres for the cemetery, which was scheduled to be dedicated on November 19, 1863 as the Soldier’s National Cemetery to honor the fallen.
Almost as an afterthought, Wills sent the president a handwritten invitation stating: “It is the desire that, after the oration, you, as the Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”
Lincoln accepted, so important was the occasion and so weighty the message he intended to deliver. The Civil War still raged and Lincoln realized he had to inspire the people to continue the fight.
Lincoln left Washington about noon, November 18, on a special train of four cars, with several Cabinet officers and other dignitaries. He was in good spirits, laughing and joking, but he remarked to one of his secretaries, John Hay, that he felt weak.
The train arrived about 5:00 p.m. at Gettysburg. Lincoln was escorted to the home of David Wills where he worked for a while in his room and prepared a clean copy of his remarks. He had written half of the speech in Washington but had the rest in his mind before he left the White House and needed only a few quick moments to write it all out. He chose his words deliberately, preferring as he always did short words to long, and of Anglo-Saxon derivation.
On the morning of November 19 Lincoln gave his speech the final touches and made a clear copy. He mentioned to John Nicolay, his other private secretary, that he felt dizzy. At about 10:00 a.m., upon emerging from the Wills house, dressed in a new black suit, white gloves and a stovepipe hat, Lincoln encountered a huge crowd whose deafening cheers made him blush. He joined a procession to the cemetery by horseback – a slow march of about ¾ mile to the burial ground. An enormous crowd of some 15,000 people spread over the hillside of the new cemetery on the outskirts of Gettysburg. There was still much work to be done: piles of coffins waited to be buried and skeletons of horses still lay about – gruesome evidence of the three day battle in July.
The speaker’s platform was crowded. Lincoln wasn’t the main speaker of the day. That distinction went to the most preeminent orator of his day, the distinguished, venerable, white-haired Edward Everett – former congressman, U.S. senator, governor of Massachusetts, Secretary of State and President of Harvard. Everett spoke for two hours, delivering a flowery oration of 13,600 words by memory.
A hymn followed. When he was introduced, the president was “vociferously cheered by the vast audience”. A newspaper reporter described it: “The president rises slowly, draws from his pocket a paper…and reads the brief, pithy remarks”. In “the slow, spoken words of the president” some listeners detected a strong Kentucky accent in his high, penetrating voice, so clear and loud that it carried to the outer extremities of the crowd.
Filled with poetic and rhetorical constructs, the Gettysburg Address is more of a poem than a political speech – filled with musical cadences, repetitive phrases and echoes of the King James Version of the Bible. In ten sentences, 272 words and well less than three minutes, Lincoln put the Civil War in perspective as a test of the success of the American Revolution. Lincoln found meaning in the fact that the Union victory at Gettysburg had coincided with the nation’s July 4 birthday. He described his vision for “a new birth of freedom” for America. He reminded those present of the hard work of our forefathers. In invoking the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln reminded his listeners and the thousands who would read his words that theirs was a nation pledged not merely to constitutional liberty but also to human equality, that the war was purging the nation of the crime of slavery, allowing “a new birth of freedom” for America.
His speech transformed the event from a dedication to the fallen soldiers into a rededication to the war effort by the living to preserve a nation of freedom. The voice is not the first person singular (“I”). Ten times Lincoln uses the pronoun “we” and three times “us”. The speaker is, in effect, America and the Unionist, not the president.
At the time, the reaction to the address was mixed. Some remember a dignified silence following the address. One historian writes that after Lincoln’s presentation “the applause was delayed, scattered and barely polite”. The New York Times reported the speech was interrupted five times by applause, with “long, sustained applause” when Lincoln stopped speaking.
Other public reaction was divided along partisan lines. One Democratic-leaning newspaper scathingly observed: “The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States”. The Republican-leaning New York Times was complimentary. In Massachusetts, the Springfield Republican printed the entire speech, calling it “a perfect gem… deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma”. Journalists and others who were present commented it was: “the right thing, in the right place, and a perfect thing in every respect”; a “brief, but immortal speech”; “the most perfect piece of American eloquence”.
In a letter he wrote to Lincoln the following day, Edward Everett praised the president for his elegant and concise speech, saying: “Permit me…to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity and appropriateness… I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” Lincoln replied that he was glad to know the speech was not a total failure.
The impact of the speech could be measured in the number of times the president was asked to provide copies in his own handwriting. Five currently survive.
The speech in Lincoln’s hand on parchment
There is only one confirmed photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg. Given the length of time it took for 19th century photographers to get “set up” before taking a picture, it is quite plausible that they just weren’t prepared for the brevity of Lincoln’s remarks.
The only known photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg (close-up below).
Lincoln had accomplished what he wanted to do at Gettysburg. He had succeeded in broadening the aims of the war from Union to Equality and Union. Before the delivery of this speech the United States was a plural phrase (“The United States are…”); after the Civil War the term United States was used in the singular (“the United States is…”)
When Lincoln boarded the 6:30 p.m. train for Washington D.C. he was feverish and weak, with a severe headache. Upon his return to the White House his doctor put him to bed. Diagnosed with a mild version of Smallpox (known as varioloid), he spent the next three weeks in quarantine in the White House, seeing few visitors and transacting little public business. He remained in good spirits and joked that his illness gave him an answer to the incessant demands of office-seekers. He said, “Now I have something I can give everybody.”
Today the Gettysburg Address is believed to be the most important speech ever given in American history and one of the greatest of all time (“a succinct, sublime masterpiece” contrasted to Everett’s florid, diffuse two-hour history lecture). The full text of the speech is forever etched in the psyche of America and carved in stone on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
One man, one speech, and a singular moment in history: Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863 – seven score and twenty-two years ago.
February 5, 1865, 56 years old, Washington D.C., Studio of Alexander Gardner
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 gave their lives 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 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. 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 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 government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (March 4, 1861-April 15, 1865) b. February 12, 1809 d. April 15, 1865, Age 56
