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VOICE ONE:
It is one of the most important, and most beautiful, speechesever given in the English language. I’m Steve Ember with BobDoughty.
VOICE TWO:
President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is our report thisweek on the VOA Special English program THIS IS AMERICA.
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VOICE TWO:
We begin in the summer of eighteen-sixty-three in Gettysburg, alittle town in the state of Pennsylvania. Gettysburg was a smallfarming and market town back then.
On July first, second and third, two huge armies clashed inGettysburg. They fought in one of the most important battles of theAmerican Civil War. Because of that battle, the little market townof Gettysburg became an extremely important part of Americanhistory.
VOICE ONE:
General Robert E. Lee led the Southern army of the Confederatestates into Pennsylvania. He went into the North in hopes of winninga major victory — a victory that might help the Confederate cause.
Southern states, where slavery was legal, were trying to formtheir own country. They wanted the right to govern themselves.Northern states did not want to let them leave the Union.
General George Gordon Mead’s Union Army was following theConfederates. The two armies met at Gettysburg in the fierce heat ofsummer in July of eighteen-sixty-three.
Little Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, the Devil’s Den, Pickett’sCharge. American history books are filled with the names of placesin and around Gettysburg where the soldiers fought.
These are places where thousands of men died defending the ideaof a United States of America.
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General Lee and the Confederate Army lost the great battle. Theywere forced to return to the South. Many more battles would befought during the Civil War. Some were just as terrible as the oneat Gettysburg. Yet few are remembered so well.
Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought on the NorthAmerican continent. And it was the subject of a speech given fivemonths later by the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
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VOICE ONE:
On November second of eighteen-sixty-three, David Wills ofGettysburg wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln. In theletter, Wills explained that the bodies of soldiers killed in thegreat battle had been moved to a special area and buried.
He invited President Lincoln to attend ceremonies to honor thesoldiers who had died defending the Union. Wills also explained thatthe main speaker that day would be Mister Edward Everett. He was themost famous speaker in the United States at that time.
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President Lincoln accepted the invitation. History experts say hemay have done this for several reasons. President Lincoln may havedecided that it was a good time to honor all those who had giventheir lives in the Civil War. He may also have seen the ceremony asa chance to say how important the war was. To him, it was importantnot just to save the union of states, but also to establish freedomand equality under the law.
President Lincoln worked on the speech for some time. He wrote ithimself, on White House paper. He arrived in Gettysburg by train theday before the ceremony. David Wills had invited the president tostay the night in his home.
President Lincoln, Edward Everett and David Wills left the housefor the new burial place the next morning. For a few moments, let usimagine that this is November nineteenth, eighteen-sixty-three. Theweather is cool. There are clouds in the sky.
It is almost noon. We have arrived at the new Gettysburgcemetery. Fifteen-thousand people have come to hear Edward Everettand Abraham Lincoln.
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For almost two hours, PresidentLincoln has been listening to the speech by Edward Everett. Thegreat speaker’s voice is powerful. He speaks of ancient burialceremonies. He tells how the young soldiers who had died here shouldbe honored. At last, Everett finishes.
Moments later a man stands and announces: “Ladies and gentlemen,his excellency — the president of the United States, AbrahamLincoln.”
The president leaves his chair and walks slowly forward. The hugecrowd becomes silent. Abraham Lincoln begins to speak. Listen now tothe words read by Shep O’Neal.
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on thiscontinent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to theproposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether thatnation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a finalresting place for those who here gave their lives that that nationmight live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should dothis.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can notconsecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, livingand dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poorpower to add or detract. The world will little note, nor longremember what we say here, but it can never forget what they didhere.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to theunfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so noblyadvanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great taskremaining before us — that from these honored dead we takeincreased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last fullmeasure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these deadshall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shallhave a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, bythe people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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Political opponents of Abraham Lincoln immediately criticized thespeech. But there was nothing unusual about that. Edward Everett,the great speaker, knew the critics were wrong. He knew he had hearda speech that expressed difficult thoughts and ideas clearly andsimply.
Everett also recognized the power and the beauty of Lincoln’swords. Later he wrote to the president. He said Lincoln had said intwo minutes what he had tried to say in two hours.
Newspapers throughout the United States quickly printed thepresidential speech again and again.
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Edward Everett asked President Lincoln if he could have a copy ofthe speech. The president wrote a copy and sent it to him. TheEverett copy is one of five known copies that Lincoln wrote by hand.
Today, two of those copies belong to the Library of Congress. Oneof them may be the copy that President Lincoln used when he gave thespeech in Gettysburg.
President Lincoln also made a copy for a soldier named ColonelAlexander Bliss. This copy hangs on a wall in the White House in thebedroom that was used by President Lincoln.
The copy that Lincoln sent to Edward Everett is in the IllinoisState Historical Library in Springfield.
A historian named George Bancroft also asked the president for acopy. That document now belongs to Cornell University, in Ithaca,New York.
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President Lincoln wrote all five of these documents. The meaningof the speech is the same in each. However, some words aredifferent. The version with the words most often used is the onemade for Colonel Bliss that hangs in the White House.
The speech is also carved into the stone walls of the LincolnMemorial in Washington, D-C. Almost everyone who visits the memorialstands before the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln and reads thespeech.
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Several years ago, the Library of Congress began a project totranslate President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address into otherlanguages.
Versions in twenty-nine languages are on the Internet. Theseinclude Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Slovak, Spanish andTurkish.
The address of the Web site is www.loc.gov. That is the theLibrary of Congress. Click on “Exhibitions,” then go down to thelink for the Gettysburg Address.
There is also a link from the Special English Web site:
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VOICE ONE:
Our program was written by Paul Thompson and produced by CatyWeaver. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Bob Doughty. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA,a program in Special English on the Voice of America.