Tomorrow will mark the 150^th anniversary of arguably, the greatest speech ever delivered by an American president but, there are things you may not realize about the Gettysburg Address.

To fully understand the monumental moment in American history, one must first stand back just far enough to see more of the picture.

The Battle Itself.

Gettysburg pitted the Confederate army under Robert E. Lee against the Army of the Potomac under General George Meade.

In all, 170,000 fought in that battle between July 1^st and July 3^rd and, on July 4^th, 1863, Lee retreated but…Not before nearly 1/3 of his army was killed or wounded and…1/4 of the Union forces were likewise.

The dead had been hastily buried in shallow graves and most were either not or poorly identified.

There was a need to commemorate the battle and pay proper tribute to the Union soldiers whose lives ended there, and that leads us to…

David Willis.

Willis was an attorney and former superintendent of schools along with being the former bank president of Gettysburg when, on the 1^st of July, the civil war intruded directly into his life.

During the 3 day battle, neighbors hid from the fighting in the basement of the Willis home.

Willis, realizing the need to properly recognize the lives lost at Gettysburg immediately proposed a National Cemetery there to Governor Curtain and he, Willis, was named to head up the effort.

The Dedication.

Imagine trying to clear the way for a National Cemetery in but 3 months time today. It could never be done but, this was 1863 and such things were not road blocked by over burdensome government regulations then.

Willis set the date for the Cemetery dedication for October 23^rd, 1863 and, had invited the esteemed speaker and former president of Harvard, Edward Everett, as the keynote orator.

Everett told Willis that he would not be able to oblige on that date as he would need considerably more time to prepare a speech worthy of the battle and the event at hand.

Willis postponed the dedication, at Everett’s suggestion until the 19^th of November.

Lincoln…The Afterthought.

It wasn’t until November 2^nd that David Willis, out of respect for the office, sent an invitation to President Lincoln.

Willis asked Lincoln to attend and to…”formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”

Willis expected little more than for Lincoln to announce that the National Cemetery at Gettysburg had been officially recognized.

Lincoln, for his part, most likely began to write his remarks before leaving the white house the day before the event and may well, as some historians recall, edited those remarks while on the train.

It was, however, at the home of David Willis on the night before the dedication, where Lincoln put the finishing touches on his brief remarks.

Secretary of State Stanton who went with Lincoln to Gettysburg remarked that Lincoln looked ghastly in his color that day and, Lincoln himself, mentioned that he felt dizzy and somewhat ill before the event.

Little wonder…

When Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, there were still caskets stacked in the streets for the bodies buried in the shallow battlefield graves. The bones of horses killed by cannon and rifle fire remained in the battlefield and, even after 4 months, the smell of death could be detected in the air.

273 words.

The next day, Edward Everett took the stage and delivered his keynote speech which would be reprinted in papers the next day, ALL 13,500 WORDS OF THE 2 HOUR ORATORY.

When the applause, whether for the greatness of the speech or for the fact that after 2 hours, it was over, President Lincoln rose and walked to the speaker’s platform.

The Gettysburg Address.

Lincoln’s address, in stark contrast to the grueling 2 hour, 13,500 word tome by Everett, was but 273 words and delivered in just under 2 minutes.

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 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 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.

Little did Lincoln know.

Lincoln most likely would have been astonished to find himself memorialized in marble and granite in Washington DC and upon the side of a mountain and certainly felt he had left the 15,000 in the crowd at Gettysburg with nothing to be remembered.

It is clear, from his Gettysburg Address that he never had any idea that his remarks there would ring like a bell across the nation for decades and, indeed, 150 years later…

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…”

And  just as clear that he believed his words held little weight when compared to those who gave their all to reunite a nation.

“…but it can never forget what they did here.”

Edward Everett, however, recognized the greatness of the words as he, the next day, wrote to Lincoln…“Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the Cemetery. I should be glad, 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.”

Sallie Cook, a 19 year old girl who had met Lincoln earlier that day at the home of David Willis and was sitting on the steps of the speaker’s platform during the address remembered it this way when she recounted the event some 68 years later: “I was so close to the President, and heard all of the address, but it seemed short. Then there was an impressive silence, like our Menallen Friends’ Meeting. There was no applause when he stopped speaking.”

Lincoln, in the weeks and months following the speech, rewrote it from the best of his memory for 5 different friends …Including Edward Everett…. And each time, it varied slightly.

2 of those 5 copies, one presented to John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln’s personal assistants, are in the Library of Congress.

The Nicolay copy however, is believed to be the original as the first part of it was written on Executive Mansion (white house) stationary and the remaining portion, on a piece of lined paper most likely from Willis’ home in Gettysburg. The 2 pages have matching fold marks as it was said Lincoln had them in the pocket of his suit coat.

150 Years Later.

One wonders how much of this will be taught to children in school tomorrow. How much of the back story will today’s youth ever know?

Sadly, the odds are against them ever being taught the lessons of that most important speech, it’s real meaning or why it remains so poignant today.

Tomorrow, on the 150^th anniversary of the greatest presidential address ever delivered, Lincoln’s polar opposite, Barack Hussein Obama, has declined the invitation to attend.

It’s just as well.

To hear Obama, a man who is repulsed by the vision of the founders and framers read the words of Lincoln, a man who was deeply devoted to that vision, would sully the memory of the man who stood even taller than his physical stature, to set men free.

There is NOTHING Obama could say, were he to speak for 2 hours as Edward Everett did 150 years ago, or 2 days, or 2 years that would brush up against or add a single thing TO the 2 minutes of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Better the dead of the Battle of Gettysburg rest in peace on tomorrow’s 150th anniversary of the dedication of the cemetery that holds their bodies and that we, as Patriots, remember the words and their meaning, delivered by a president who understood what those men did for the future of the nation, even if he had no idea what HE would mean to the Republic for all time.