BY

CHAPTER VII

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

1863.

Y the retreat of Lee from Gettysburg and the CHAP. VII. immediate pursuit by Meade, the burial of the dead and care of the wounded on that great battlefield were left largely to the military and local authorities of the State of Pennsylvania. Governor Andrew G. Curtin gave the humane and patriotic duty his thoughtful attention; and during its execution the appropriate design of changing a portion of the field into a permanent cemetery, where the remains of the fallen heroes might be brought together, and their last resting-place suitably protected and embellished, was conceived and begun. The citizen soldiery from seventeen of the loyal States had taken part in the conflict on the Union side, and the several Governors of these States heartily coöperated in the project, which thus acquired a National character. This circumstance made it natural that the dedication ceremonies should be of more than usual interest and impressiveness. Accordingly, at the beginning of November, 1863, when the work was approaching its completion, Mr. David Wills, the special agent of Governor Curtin, and also acting for the several States, who had not only originated, but mainly

CHAP. VII. Superintended, the enterprise, wrote the following letter of invitation to President Lincoln:

1863.

"The several States having soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, who were killed at the battle of Gettysburg, or have since died at the various hospitals which were established in the vicinity, have procured grounds on a prominent part of the battlefield for a cemetery, and are having the dead removed to them and properly buried. These grounds will be consecrated and set apart to this sacred purpose, by appropriate ceremonies, on Thursday, the 19th instant. Hon. Edward Everett will deliver the oration. I am authorized by the Governors of the different States to invite you to be present and participate in these ceremonies, which will doubtless be very imposing and solemnly impressive. It is the desire that after the oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks. It will be a source of great gratification to the many widows and orphans that have been made almost friendless by the great battle here, to have you here personally; and it will kindle anew in the breasts of the comrades of these brave dead, who are now in the tented field or nobly meeting the foe in the front, a confidence that they who sleep in death on the battlefield are not forgotten by those highest in authority; and they will feel that, should their fate be the same, their remains will not be uncared-for. We hope to Lincoln, you will be able to be present to perform this last solemn act to the soldier dead on this battlefield." President Lincoln expressed his willingness to perform the duty requested of him. On the day

Wills

Nov. 2, 1863.

MS.

preceding the ceremonies he went by special CHAP. VII. train to Gettysburg, accompanied by the Secretary of State and other prominent persons. The village was full of visitors when they arrived. That evening in response to a serenade Mr. Seward made a short address, in the course of which he said:

I thank my God that I believe this strife is going to end in the removal of that evil which ought to have been removed by deliberate councils and peaceful means. And I thank him for the hope that when that cause is removed, simply by the operation of abolishing it, as the origin and agent of the treason that is without justification and without parallel, we shall thenceforth be united, be only one country, having only one hope, one ambition, and one destiny.

When we part to-morrow night, let us remember that we owe it to our country and to mankind that this war shall have for its conclusion the establishing of the principle of democratic government;-the simple principle that whatever party, whatever portion of the community, prevails by constitutional suffrage in an election, that party is to be respected and maintained in power, until it shall give place, on another trial and another verdict, to a different portion of the people. If you do not do this, you are drifting at once and irresistibly to the very verge of universal, cheerless, and hopeless anarchy. But with that principle this government of ours the purest, the best, the wisest, and the happiest Nov. 18, in the world-must be, and, so far as we are concerned, practically will be, immortal.

At the appointed hour on the 19th a vast procession, with military music, moved to the cemetery grounds where, in the midst of a distinguished auditory, the orator of the day, Edward Everett, made an address worthy alike of his own fame and the extraordinary occasion. His discourse

Seward, Speech at Gettysburg,

1863.

CHAP. VII. Occupied itself with three principal and natural divisions of his subject: the great battle, the origin and character of the war, and the object and consequences of victory. It is not too much to say that for the space of two hours he held his listeners spell-bound by the rare power of his art. The durable interest of history in his utterance lies most in the witness he bore concerning the character and responsibility of those who began the great conflict of which this battle was one of the principal events.

If there was an American who was qualified by moral training, by literary culture, by political study, by official experience, by party affiliation, by long practice in historical criticism, and ripe experience in public utterance, to sit in calm judicial inquiry on the causes, theories, and possible results of the civil war, that man was Edward Everett. Furnished under the most favorable auspices, during his student years, with the full panoply of scholastic acquirements that teachers and textbooks can provide; beginning his career as a minister of the gospel, under the rigid self-restraints and tempering charity which that calling imposes, he passed successively to the duties of a college professor, where out of the critical study of the value of words grew the rare perfection of his literary style. Then by a ten years' participation in National legislation as a member of the lower House of Congress, he became familiar with the quality of laws and the ends of government. Following this, his functions as Governor of Massachusetts gave him practical insight into the principles and needs of local administration; the