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The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows

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The Gettysburg Address was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863. The battle had been fought in July but now a National Cemetery was to dedicated honoring the Union dead who had died that the United States might live.
What a day it was ! A beautiful autumn crisp with the promise of a warm sky sailing serenly over the sight of the bloodiest batlle in American history. A day when the renowned orator Edward Everett spoke for over two hours drawing analogies between Gettysburg and those men who died to preserve Athenian democracy. Everett gave a detailed account of the battle emphasizing the legitimacy of the Union effort. He also spoke with insight on the superiority of the federal government to which the individual states pledged their loyalty.
And then...after the bands and the songs, the prayers and the cheers were silent the sixteenth President of the United States rose to speak. He had a mild form of smallpox; had lost his son Willie to death in the White House and had a son Tad who was ill back home in Washington DC.
Lincoln spoke his 272 words concluding with his immortal words, "''that the goverment of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Lincoln drew on a lifetime of study to produce this masterpiece. The Declaration of Independence; the oratory of Webster and Clay, Shakespeare and the Bible all played a role in his crafting of the speech. If the Emancipation Proclamation was prose genius then the Gettysburg Address is poetry sublime in its assertion of indivdual freedom and the right of human beings to breathe free air.
The speech was neglected, for the most part, by contemporary press accounts. Only in the 1880s when the movement to reconcile NOrth and South picked up steam did it take on an importance in the American heart that has never been usurped, The GA inspired black fighters for Civil Rights as the twentieth century led to a cry for racial equality in our nation. Men like Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela in South Africa were inspired by Lincoln's words.
Boritt's book is divided into several sections. The first two hundred pages deal with the account of the night and the day Lincoln spent in Gettysburg in 1863. We learn of the horrific battlefield casualties and see closeup the preparations made and the carrying out of the ceremony on November 19th. Other sections deal with the five authentic copies of the Gettysburg Address; the complete text of Edward Everett's two hour oration that day; an extensive bibliography and notes. Professor Boritt also shows us pictures of the drafts as written in longhand by Lincoln.
The book is also a fascinating look into how the Gettysburg Address achieved mythic fame since it was first uttered on that November day. In a moving final chapter we read the address in the context of a 9-11 obervance of the attack on the World Trade Center.
As long as our United States lives we all pray that the Gettysburg Address will be there to inspire us to work for equality and justice for all of our citizens regardless of race, religion or political affiliation.
Boritt is one of the best scholars on the life of Lincoln and the Civil War era. Anyone who teaches the Civil War in the classroom should make use of this outstanding work of scholarship and love.

Gabor Boritt's "The Gettysburg Gospel" is a stunning achievement. It is a superb history of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by a professional historian and masterful storyteller after a lifetime of exhaustive research. Boritt is at the top of his game.

The first chapter places the reader in the horror of Gettysburg immediately after the battle. Hundreds of books have been written about the Civil War and the battle of Gettysburg, but Boritt chooses the less well known "After Battle" to introduce us to this nightmare of time and place. No battlefield glory here. The hot July stench of rotting human and animal flesh that pervaded the town and for miles around; the anguish of soldiers' wives, fathers, and mothers opening grave after grave, searching for their loved ones; and the sadness of nurses and doctors caring for men, dying in agonizing pain, treated with hopelessly inadequate resources and nineteenth-century medicine are brought home with stark reality. Boritt notes that one exhausted nurse (Emily Souder, in a letter home) admitted that after an emotionally overwhelming day of work, she buried her head in her pillows so as to block out the cries of dying men, heard clearly through her bedroom window. Agony and despair were aplenty.

Lincoln came to Gettysburg to redirect America's vision toward the stars, to give ultimate meaning to suffering and dying. And Boritt tells the story remarkably well. His description of the dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery and the delivery of Lincoln's address is meticulously researched, thoroughly referenced, and carefully reasoned. No wild claims here. The historian guides us through the myriad of assertions and differing remembrances so as to provide us a thoughtful account of Lincoln and his work at Gettysburg. Boritt's historical research will become the benchmark for all others. Exceptional.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a superb piece of writing, much akin to political poetry. But with the end of the cemetery dedication, the history of the Address is only half told, and Boritt moves on skillfully to document how we the people recreated Lincoln's Address - in ways that the president probably never envisioned or intended. It seems that, for one reason or another, we need heroes and, in a sense, create them over and over again. In the decades after the Civil War, the martyred president achieved god-like status and his pronouncements became sacred words uttered from on high. Perhaps we needed a Lincoln myth in order to nation-build following the Civil War when "these united States" became "the United States." Perhaps we needed a hero to bind up the nation's wounds, to reconstruct North and South into one people. And perhaps there was a darker side. Perhaps nation and Lincoln myth were what held the vision of white America as it ignored the issue of race and failed to live out its "All men are created equal" creed for the next one hundred years. Boritt lays this all before us, gives us the history, the facts, and allows us to make our own judgments. Outstanding.

"The Gettysburg Gospel" is now the standard against which all other histories of the Gettysburg Address will be judged. This book should be read by every American.

With the passage of time, the Battle of Gettysburg of July 1 -- 3, 1863) and President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, dedicating the Soldier's National Cemetery have become American icons. They help define for many people the basic values of our country. In his book "The Gettysburg Gospel: The Speech Nobody Knows" Professor Gabor Boritt offers a detailed account of the Gettysburg Address, including its background, reception, and meaning. As Boritt shows, the Gettysburg Address has become a statement for Americans of "who we are" as a people. His book illuminates the Gettysburg Address and, through it, he illuminates the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War itself. Boritt is Professor of Civil War studies and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. He has written extensively on the Civil War.

In the opening chapters of the book, Boritt emphasizes the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, including the great suffering of the many wounded soldiers left behind to be cared for after the Battle. He discusses the decision to set aside a portion of the battlefield as a cemetery for the Union dead and the invitation extended to Lincoln to speak at the dedication of the cemetery. The book includes substantial discussion of contested issues in prior studies of Lincoln's speech including the circumstances of the composition of the various drafts. In great detail, Boritt discusses Lincoln's train trip to Gettysburg, the celebrations in the town during the evening befor the now famous dedication, and the mixed reception the speech received when it was delivered.

But these discussions, interesting as they are, do not form the major theme of the book. Boritt shows how the historical record is confused and inconclusive, in many respects, about the speech and its reception. The full significance of the speech became appreciated only about 20 years later, after the end of Reconstruction. Boritt points out, insightfully, that Lincoln's address had the aim of furthering the Union war effort by justifying the need of the terrible sacrifice of life that had occurred already at Gettysburg and elsewhere and that would need to occur elsewhere to realize the war aims of the United States. Boritt also has valuable things to say in contrasting the reception of the Emancipation Proclamation with that of the Gettysburg Address. The Proclamation was regarded as Lincoln's achievement while the Reconstruction period was underway. With the end of Reconstruction, the Gettysburg Address claimed greater public attention, both due to its poetic eloquence and to the interpretation it was given by some, due to its stark, abstract character, in promoting sectional reconciliation and national unity rather than Reconstruction. Throughout the book, Boritt has important things to say about the relationship between Reconstruction and Reconciliation in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Among the things I liked best about Boritt's book was the detailed attention it gives to the speech of Edward Everett, which discussed the history of the battle, the role women played after the battle in taking care of the wounded, and the need for sectional reconciliation following the conflict. (Everett's speech is given in full as an appendix to the book.) Boritt discusses as well American art and sculpture and about how Lincoln is depicted, both with respect to the Emancipation Proclamation and with respect to the Gettysburg Address. Boritt gives great attention to the religious aspect of the Address -- as it shows Lincoln moving towards a theism but not towards a denominational religion. (Lincoln's movement might reflect an important religious attitude in the United States as a whole.) He also discusses the role of the Gettysburg Address in what many scholars have referred to as America's Civil Religion -- its sense of itself and its purpose -- and American nationalism. Boritt also sees the Gettysburg Address as a precursor of Lincoln's Second Innaugural Address.

The book includes an excellent annotated biblography of the Battle of Gettysburg and of Lincoln's speech which will be useful to readers wanting to explore these matters further. The book beautifully combines close factual detail with meditations on the lasting meaning and significance of the Gettysburg Address. The book will be of great interest to readers wanting to think about and expand their understanding of Lincoln's great speech.

Robin Friedman

Gabor Boritt is one of the nation's leading historians of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War; it is not hard to understand how he assumed this position when one reads a work as elegant and beautiful as The Gettysburg Gospel. In his latest book, Boritt nearly perfects the art of writing history as a narrative. What the reader encounters is a moving story that will engross one from Boritt's first sentences. We are introduced to the greatest man-made emergency in American history: the "uncertainty and dread" of the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg. Moving on from the detritus that litters the battlefield, the thousands of casualties, and the civilian lives which have been shattered forever, we read of the conception of the first National Cemetery and the process of assembling an appropriate ceremony in honor of those who gave "the last full measure of devotion." Relying on period newspapers and overlooked primary source materials, Boritt then assembles the story of Lincoln's journey to Gettysburg and the evening before the dedicatory ceremonies, November 18, 1863. Finally, "the big day" arrives, and Boritt transports us to that solemn day. But the story does not conclude with Lincoln's two minute appendix to the Emancipation Proclamation. Boritt returns us to the pages of the period newspapers, and the fruit of his extensive research in papers emanating from localities across the country is a cohesive and cogent analysis of the national response. Beyond the immediate response, however, Boritt looks at how the Gettysburg Address became revered as some of the most sacrosanct lines in American history, documenting and analyzing its role in American culture and memory since its utterance. The emotional climax of The Gettysburg Gospel comes with a short, yet beautifully written chapter entitled "Coda," which transports readers to another commemorative ceremony...this one in Lower Manhattan in 2002. Boritt packs an emotional punch with Governor Pataki's use of the Gettysburg Address at that ceremony as the consummate example of his underlying suggestion of the document as not only one that redefined Lincoln and the Civil War, but the document that continues to define us.

Boritt's writing style is unique and almost poetic in its elegance. Interpolating cogent analysis into his narrative, utilizing oft-forgotten primary sources to establish oft-forgotten details, and parsing Lincoln's words with several scientific and useful appendices, The Gettysburg Gospel is not only a valuable volume for anyone interested in the Civil War Era, but a must-read for any American who cares to know who we are. If anyone could near that definition, it was Lincoln. If anyone can tell us why, it is Gabor Boritt.

This is a great history of the Gettysburg Address, but more, it is an extremely good look at the town of Gettysburg after the battle was over. Mr. Boritt describes the carnage - rotting and burning horseflesh, shallow graves, piles of amputated limbs, etc. - in vivid detail. He then chronicles the herculean efforts of those who handled the carnage, treated the wounded and buried the dead. These tireless workers were left behind by the armies, citizens of the town or volunteers who came to help. The first person accounts were vivid.

Mr. Boritt, having set the stage for the ceremony of the dedication of the cemetery, then describes the ceremony with good looks at Everett's speech and then Lincoln's. He carries descriptions from its writing through delivery to the aftermath. He also breaks the speech down sentence by sentence. His analysis is not pedantic. He interestingly gives the meaning as heard by the differing audiences; i.e.: you hear what you want to hear.

Following the speech, he relates the reaction around the country and Confederacy and ends with the speech's legacy over the 140 years since its delivery.

One might wonder how a 400+ page book can be devoted to a speech of some 270 words. The narrative is 206 pages, the remaining 209 consist of appendices and index. The appendices are interesting. There is the full text of Everett's speech, an analysis of the Address and the different wording as reported by those who heard it and a summation of what has happended to the manuscripts of the speech.

As good as the analysis of the Gettysgurg Address is, and it is excellent, what makes this book a rich history is the account of the town of Gettysburg. That well be the most memorable part of the book. Rarely has there been such an in depth description of what remains in a town and how it functions after a terrific battle has taken place there.

Highly recommended for Lincoln scholars and readers who appreciate good historical writing.

This book was a pleasure for the lay-person to read. Bringing the speech to life, while altering commonly held misperceptions. Highly recommended to all levels of history buffs, and even those just looking for an enjoyable read.

First of all, Boritt does an excellent job of debunking the myth of Lincoln writing the address on the train. Looking at the pre-speech autographs and testimony of people in a position to know, he shows how Lincoln squeezed in time the night before and morning of the speech to give it the most careful attention he could, as was his wont when speechwriting.

Next, Boritt gets us back to the intent of the address.

First, he clearly shows Lincoln's meaning -- a meaning that whites of South and often of North buried further and further after 1877 -- was his stated continuing commitment to Emancipation. It was NOT to ennoble both sides in the struggle, let alone the meaning of their efforts, which were opposed even in 1861, and diametrically opposed after Jan. 1, 1863, or even Sept. 22, 1862.

Second, it was a rededication to the war effort, as exemplified at Gettysburg.

Third, as some Democratic papers noted, it was indeed in part the first salvo in his re-election campaign. Lincoln needed to underscore for that reason why the "last full measure of devotion" continued to be needed, not just to prosecute the war, but to prosecute the war with full devotion by keeping him in charge.

Fourth, it was a dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield as rededication to all of the above.

Boritt also gives us information about Everett's speech, and about the post-ceremony reception of Lincoln's comments.

Numerous appendices, including comparison of the AP report of the Address and Lincoln's first post-speech edits (he added "under God" orally during the delivery and then to post-speech edits, for example) add greatly to the value of the book.

Dr. Gabor Boritt has now done twice what most historians hope to accomplish once in their academic careers. Gabor Boritt has made it possible for his readers to grasp the thoughts and ideas of one of the great Americans of all time. In his Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream and in his latest contribution The Gettysburg Gospel, Gabor Boritt has made it possible for all who are interested to understand the ideas and feelings of our 16th President. The first of the mentioned titles has become a classic among Lincoln titles, and I feel that The Gettysburg Gospel will also assume that position.

In his latest contribution Gabor Boritt has delivered a wonderful narrative on the events revolving around November 19, 1863. We witness the aftermath of the battle, the plans and beginnings of the National cemetery, the celebrations on the night prior to the dedication, and the ceremonies of that day now approaching its 143rd anniversary. Then Dr. Boritt relates to us how Lincoln's words were received by those in attendance and by those of his generation, but more importantly, The Gettysburg Gospel then goes on to relate how these words have been heard and interpreted by Americans and non-Americans over the last143 years.

It is a truly remarkable story made even more remarkable in the fact it is given to us by one who fled from the 1956 Hungarian uprising to come to a land whose government is "of the people, by the people, for the people,...".

Gabor Boritt is Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College and a recognized Lincoln scholar. He writes with the assurance and authority that only comes from long association with the subject. This assurance is the strong foundation for this extraordinary book.

The Gettysburg Address is one of America's most loved speeches and something that we have been exposed to all of our lives. How it came into being, is delivered, received and remembered is a story worth telling. With great care, the author tells this story, showing where myth and reality agree and where they disagree. The strongest and most enjoyable part of the book is the history of the development of the address and the dedication of the national cemetery. This is a Lincoln we seldom see, a political over extended President, pressing the flesh and mending fences. Very aware of the election results of 1862 and the importance of 1864 election, the trip is political. A special train fills with political figures and reporters that both need to see the President and the President needs to see. While ill, Lincoln extends himself to be assessable to as many people as possible. The description of the trip, the town and the night before the dedication is an excellent look at 19th century politics.

The author walks us through the dedication ceremony, slowly detailing each activity. His refusal to hurry to the Address is one of the strong points of the book. This detailed walk, builds an environment that places the reader in the crowd helping us understand the impact of those few words. The reporting of the ceremony is another strength; partisan politics has a great deal to do with what the newspapers printed. The Gettysburg Address reporting ranged from being ignored to fully printed, ridiculed to honored. Overall, the Address was well received by the public, who understood it to be an important poetic statement of the government's position.

What did Lincoln say? What did the people think they heard? How did The Gettysburg Address come into the form we know? The book contains a very detailed explanation that gives the best answer we are likely to have. A line-by-line comparison of the copies written by Lincoln is instructive.

Less sure is the author's ideas on the path to "The Gettysburg Address". Linking these words to the national reconciliation seems reasonable and fits with Gettysburg being the symbolic battle of the war. Expanding the meaning to embrace Americans, not just Union soldiers, is a major step in the process. Linking the Gettysburg Address to the rise of Jim Crow laws is overreaching and not fully proven. This is the books one weakness, among so many strengths and detracts from the overall value.

This interesting, informative book is fun to read. It is good for the casual reader and for a student of history.

I was given this book as a gift while I was recovering from a near-fatal accident. It was a welcome relief that transported me from my "recovery state of mind,"to that sleepy little Pennsylvania town in 1863. I was, am, and will always be both an history buff and a communication scholar. Rare is the opportunity for me to find an history and analysis combining these two elements. Boritt did a commendable and thorough job of presenting the topic, and opened my eyes to so very many things heretofore unknown by me. An enterprising history or rhetoric professor could make a semester class using this book alone.