The Gettysburg address

In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln stood on the site of the battle where so many had fought over three days the previous July. He was surrounded by a vast crowd, and he had come to dedicate the burial ground for the soldiers who had died there.

Before the speech, he had reported that he felt ill. The speech - fewer than 300 words - was not made short by his illness, however. Though it sounds very natural, it was not extempore. He had written it carefully in several drafts, and it took him a couple of minutes to deliver, maybe three.

In an age of political speeches heard by millions, few stand out. Very few are as short and painstakingly crafted as this one. It is just sad that we can't hear Lincoln, note his pauses, his emphases, his intonation.

But there is little doubt that this speech carries an extraordinary emotional freight which is hard to explain. It is an astonishingly affective piece of oratory, and I can't read it without feeling almost overwhelmed, 150 years after the event. I just love the mastery of this speech and its visceral power.

One interesting feature is 'here' which is repeated 8 times. Lincoln seems to use 'here' to link past and present, to encourage a sense of somehow being part of the experience of the battle, to recognise the cost, and to galvanise his hearers to action. 

If you want to hear a great reading of it, try this one by Sam Waterston. He gets it.

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 honoured 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.