The Gettysburg Address

On This Day in History: November 19, 1863

It’s fewer than three hundred words, and as part of the speech President Lincoln said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” He was wrong about that. The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in history, but initial reaction was muted, and media opinions divided.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 19, 1863--

The Battle of Gettysburg took place in the first three days of July 1863, and it was a horror. Traitorous general Robert Lee led his traitorous Confederate Army against Union general George Meade. After three days, the combined casualties numbered approximately 50,000. It was a Union victory, and Lee dragged his traitorous ass back to Virginia in defeat. Many consider the battle a turning point in the U.S. Civil War because it halted Lee’s plans to invade the North and force an early end to the war. The Union victory reinvigorated the North and turned the tide against the slavery-supporting shitnuggets.

Immediately following the battle, the fallen were buried where they lay, many in poorly marked graves. A local attorney, David Wills, launched a campaign to have Gettysburg designated a national cemetery. The dedication took place on November 19, 1863. The featured speaker was Edward Everett, a leading orator in the nation who was a former senator, former secretary of state, and former head of Harvard University. Everett gave a lengthy speech on the day of dedication, but afterward he wrote to President Lincoln, saying, “I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.” Lincoln replied that he was pleased his address was not a “total failure.”

Witnesses to Lincoln’s address said the reaction to his speech was quiet, the clapping delayed, scattered, and “barely polite.” And the media was of course divided along partisan lines. Lincoln, a Republican back when Republicans weren’t the fucking worst, was praised for his speech in Republican-leaning papers such as The New York Times. Conversely, the Democrat-leaning Chicago Times proclaimed the speech shameful, with “silly, flat and dishwatery utterances.”

Lincoln’s closing statement in the short speech was “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I would say that “We can only hope” but this would not be true. We, the people, can fight to make it so.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down at JamesFell.com/books. The holidays are coming and they make great gifts.