THE Gettysburg Address happened 150 years ago. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made his speech at a dedication to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, where thousands of Union soldiers were laid to rest. The Gettysburg battle saw federal forces fighting back a Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania.
“Four score and seven years ago…” Lincoln envisioned “a new birth of freedom”.
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here,” Lincoln said of those who fought the battle, in which as many as 50,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. “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.”
Top: President Abraham Lincoln (circled) speaking at the dedication of Soldiers National Cemetery on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., November 19, 1863. Bottom: A longer view of the scene on ground still marked by evidences of the bloody battle four months earlier. The photo at top is an enlargement of the marked off rectangular area. It is believed this may be the only photo of Lincoln at the dedication where he made the four minute speech which was to become a world classic. It was found in 1953 in the National Archives in Washington where it had gone unnoticed.
This is a photo of Baltimore Street in Gettysburg, Pa., on Nov. 19, 1863. The photograph was taken a few minutes before U.S. President Abraham Lincoln rode over this road to the Gettysburg National Cemetery during its dedication where he made the Gettysburg Address.
This combination image shows, top, a photo by Timothy H. O’Sullivan made available by the Library of Congress of John L. Burns, the “old hero of Gettysburg,” with his gun and crutches in Gettysburg, Pa, in July 1983, and bottom, a Floridian portraying a wounded soldier from the 1st N.C. Infantry as part of a demonstration of a Confederate field hospital during ongoing activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Friday, June 28, 2013, in Gettysburg, Pa. Burns, 69, a veteran of the War of 1812, joined the Union Army at the Battle of Gettysburg and became a national celebrity after he survived the battle and his wounds. President Abraham Lincoln met with Burns before delivering the Gettysburg Address.
This combination image shows, top, a photo taken between Sept. 8, 1862, and June 6, 1963, and made available by the Library of Congress of five soldiers of the 6th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia outfitted with enfield muskets in front of their camp, and bottom, re-enactors portraying Union soldiers in Murray’s Brigade during ongoing activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Thursday, June 27, 2013, at Bushey Farm in Gettysburg, Pa.
The cover title of a 16-page pamphlet, printed a few days after Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, is shown on April 21, 1942. The document contains the speeches of President Lincoln and Edward Everett made at the Battlefield dedication in Gettysburgh, Pa., on Nov. 19, 1862.
The first draft of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is shown on Nov. 2, 1950. The president delivered the address at the dedication of the Gettysburg, Pa., battlefield cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863. Lincoln gave the first draft to his secretary, John Hay, whose children presented it to the Library of Congress in 1916. It is written on one side of two sheets of paper in ink. Most of the concluding sentence is written in pencil. Date: 01/11/1863
An Abraham Lincoln statue looks out over visitors to the Tomb of Abraham Lincoln Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013, the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address speech, in Springfield, Ill.
A marker is seen over the burial site of Abraham Lincoln inside the Tomb of Abraham Lincoln Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013
Marek Bennett sings the Battle Cry of Freedom before the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War look at the sundial dedication ceremony at the statehouse plaza, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013 in Concord, N.H. The original sundial from the Grand Army of the Republic was dedicated in New Hampshire in 1942, but it became lost. The sundial ceremony was held on the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery by Abraham Lincoln.
Rick Miller a President Abraham Lincoln re-enactor poses for photographs after a ceremony commemorating the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery and President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013, in Gettysburg, Pa.
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