ABRAHAM LINCOLN -- CHAPTER 18

LINCOLN SPEAKS AT GETTYSBURG      In 1861, opening battles brought the Confederates victories. In 1863, when Lee undertook the Gettysburg Campaign, the Confederates' fortune began to go down. Two armies met just west of Gettysburg. on July 3 Lee made a famous charge against the Union center.       It was briefly successful, but was finally beaten back. on November 19, 1863, Lincoln made a famous speech at dedication of National Cemetery at Gettysburg.      The orator of the day was Edward Everrett. He was born in 1794,had been United States   Senator,Governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress, Secretary of State under Fillmore, Minister to Great Britain, Phi Beta Kappa poet at Harvard, professor of Greek at Harvard, president of Harvard. He was one of the most distinguished orators in American history. He said;      " Overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Allegenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of Got and Nature..." He spoke about two hours, holding most of his audience to him. Then Lincoln      rose lowly, drew from his pocket a paper, and when the crowd became silent, made a short speech full of force.      " Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived and so 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 are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who have given their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.      But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far   above our power to add or to detract. The world will very 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on.      It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increase devotion to that cause for which they here gave the   last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under Got, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."      Lincoln seems to have thought that he made only an ordinary speech. After delivering the speech, he told a friend that he should have prepared it with greater care. " It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed." Men in a high position are often exposed to merciless and sometimes groundless censure. Lincoln was no exception. The following remarks of some inimical journalists, whose names are now forgotten, sound rather            pathetic.      " The silly remarks of the President." " Ignorant rudeness." " The silly, flat, dish-watery utterances." " The exceeding bad taste which characterized the remarks of the President." "Anything more dull and commonplace it would not be easy to produce." on November 8,1864, Lincoln was re-elected. It was a sad duty that he had to perform. He often sat all night in sad meditation over the embers of the fire.