He wasn't the main speaker that day, Edward Everett was. He spoke for 2 hours about the significance of the battle. Lincoln's address was only 10 sentences and he delivered it so quickly there are no photographs of him speaking.
Interestingly, the speech itself speaks to the insignificance of anything he could say that day. And yet the speech is unquestionably more well-known than the battle.
#Lincoln may have based the address on Pericle's Funeral Oration, which has some similarities. But, just as with the battle and battlefield, Lincoln's address has proved more enduring -- at least over the last 160 years.
Immediately upon sitting down, Lincoln was said to have commented to a friend that the speech was a flop -- "that speech won't scour."
@josh@andrew@APBBlue@law yes. On the fact that a bunch of people are talking about Abraham Lincoln and your immediate response was to come out with something about trump.
As long as I'm prattling on about Lincoln -- I've always been a big fan of the address but found his 2nd Inaugural more moving and impactful:
"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
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