"A Few Appropriate Remarks".

Probably only a few of the fifteen thousand people who heard President Abraham Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg were impressed. He spoke so briefly that the photographer didn't even have time to take his picture.

President Lincoln was not the featured speaker for the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on November 19, 1863, a little more than four months after the Battle of Gettysburg. Yet history has proclaimed his Gettysburg Address one of the greatest speeches ever made.

Two weeks before the ceremonies, Lincoln received a letter from Gettysburg attorney David Wills. "... I am authorized by the Governors of the different States to invite you to be present.... It is the desire that after the Oration, you ... formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks."

Lincoln almost didn't attend the ceremonies. He had refused other invitations because of wartime business in Washington, D.C. Also, doctors were worried about the health of his son Tad, and Mrs. Lincoln did not want her husband to go.

But President Lincoln saw this as a chance to say something important about the meaning of the Civil War. Could he convince people to continue to fight in hopes of a Union victory that would bring national unity and freedom? In his mind and on paper Lincoln practiced ways to express his reverence for the sacrifices of all who had suffered at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Lincoln did not scribble his Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope during the trip north to Pennsylvania, as many say. The Address was partly finished when Lincoln climbed aboard the special train full of Washington dignitaries on Wednesday, November 18. He had hoped to do more work on the speech, but the train was too full of excitement and conversation to do so.

The presidential party arrived just after dark and made its way to the Wills house through crowded streets noisy with band music. An elegant dinner was given for the honored guests. There Lincoln met the featured speaker, Edward Everett, a widely known statesman and orator. After dinner, Lincoln spoke briefly to a crowd outside the house, but protested that he had nothing of importance to say.

Later the President retired to his room to put the finishing touches on his speech. Lincoln's lifelong love of poetry, the Bible, and Shakespeare shaped his final choice of words.

Rain fell early the next day, but the sun came out and shone on the people--some of them families of dead soldiers--gathered for the dedication. A band played and a prayer was offered before Everett spoke. Everett's two-hour oration contained exactly what people expected to hear, and it was greeted with much applause. It took two newspaper pages to reprint the entire speech.

At 2 P.M., President Lincoln put on his steel-rimmed glasses. (It is a matter of debate whether he wore his glasses and read, or recited his speech from memory.) Wearing white gloves, Lincoln pulled his two-page manuscript from the pocket of his black coat. He still wasn't sure if he had gotten it right as he unfolded his long legs, stepped forward, and paused before the crowd. When he started to speak, his high voice shrilled forth like the sound of a bugle.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation," he began, with a reference to 1776, the year the United States declared its independence. The President's prayer-like speech lasted only about two minutes.

Lincoln had not expected people to clap much, but he was disappointed with the lukewarm response to his "few appropriate remarks." He shook hundreds of hands before boarding the train back to Washington. During the trip, he lay back with cold towels covering his eyes. Lincoln was coming down with a light case of smallpox and would be quarantined in the White House for the next two weeks.

The President's spirits started to rise the next day when a letter from Everett was delivered to him. "I should be glad," wrote Everett, "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." Some American and European newspapers also liked the speech.

The official version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains only 271 words. Though mostly short and simple, Lincoln's words hold deep meaning.

Seven different versions of the Address exist. Two original drafts are in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Two newspaper reporters took down in shorthand exactly what Lincoln said. And Lincoln wrote out three copies a few months after the ceremony. As was his custom, he made small changes and improvements to these copies.

In 1895, with Robert Lincoln's approval, Congress voted to make his father's last-known handwritten copy the official one. The so-called Bliss copy hangs in the White House. These words are recognized as a masterpiece of the English language--a hymn to the ideal of American democracy.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Bliss Copy of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Four score 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 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 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 lot 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.