GOOD MORNING WORLD
What is 270 words give or take and last 2 minutes? Easy for some. It is the Gettysburg Address. How many of you out there had to memorize this when we were in school? I know we did.
I am not going to go into the content of the text. Those approximately 270 words, depending on the copy can stand alone. Read them – they are as important to day as they were 15o years ago.
Also I am not going to bore you with the history as you can google it yourself. I will share a few tidbits though!
I was interested to find that there were five copies of this speech. The one we most commonly assign to it is the handwritten one that is signed by Lincoln. This fifth copy is called the “Bliss Copy”. This copy was named for the family of Colonel Alexander Bliss who owned this piece of paper.
The second copy which I am noting with a footnote to the Library of Congress was thought to have been written by Lincoln upon his return to Washington after he delivered the speech. He gave the paper to his secretary John Hay.
The first copy was the ‘first draft’ which became known as the Nicolay Copy. It was handwritten and historians are not sure if it was the one Lincoln was holding at Gettysburg or not. It later found its way into John Hay’s hands.
The Everett copy were written by Lincoln and sent to Edward Everett as Everett was collecting speeches from Gettysburg to put in a book for publication.
The Bancroft copy was commissioned for publication by George Bancroft. Lincoln wrote it on both sides of the paper so it was not used. This copy is the only one that is still privately owned and at the library of Cornell University.
As a kid I got a fake parchment copy of this on a trip to Washington DC. I remember being really proud of it and sadly I may still have it somewhere – I really need to clean out this house!! Back to the world of reality and not off in history and research!
Below the Bliss copy of the 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 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 here 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.
November 19, 1863.
…..ONWARD TO MORE MISADVENTURE…
http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gettysburgaddress/exhibitionitems/ExhibitObjects/HayDraft.aspx
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