A mostly encore post about today’s anniversary of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg.
Prior to 2007, this was the only known photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg, on the day of his address – Library of Congress
147 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln redefined the Declaration of Independence and the goals of the American Civil War, in a less-than-two-minute speech dedicating part of the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as a cemetery and final resting place for soldiers who died in the fierce battle fought there the previous July 1 through 3.
Interesting news for 2007: More photos from the Library of Congress collection may contain images of Lincoln. The photo above, detail from a much larger photo, had been thought for years to be the only image of Lincoln from that day. The lore is that photographers, taking a break from former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Everett’ s more than two-hour oration, had expected Lincoln to go on for at least an hour. His short speech caught them totally off-guard, focusing their cameras or taking a break. Lincoln finished before any photographer got a lens open to capture images.
Images of people in these photos are very small, and difficult to identify. Lincoln was not identified at all until 1952:
The plate lay unidentified in the Archives for some fifty-five years until in 1952, Josephine Cobb, Chief of the Still Pictures Branch, recognized Lincoln in the center of the detail, head bared and probably seated. To the immediate left (Lincoln’s right) is Lincoln’s bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, and to the far right (beyond the limits of the detail) is Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania. Cobb estimated that the photograph was taken about noontime, just after Lincoln arrived at the site and before Edward Everett’s arrival, and some three hours before Lincoln gave his now famous address.
On-line, the Abraham Lincoln Blog covered the discovery that two more photographic plates from the 1863 speech at Gettysburg may contain images of Lincoln in his trademark stove-pipe hat. Wander over to the story at the USA Today site, and you can see just how tiny are these detail images in relation to the photographs themselves. These images are tiny parts of photos of the crowd at Gettysburg. (The story ran in USA Today last Thursday or Friday — you may be able to find a copy of that paper buried in the returns pile at your local Kwikee Mart.) Digital technologies, and these suspected finds of Lincoln, should prompt a review of every image from Gettysburg that day.
To the complaints of students, I have required my junior U.S. history students to memorize the Gettysburg Address. In Irving I found a couple of students who had memorized it for an elementary teacher years earlier, and who still could recite it. Others protested, until they learned the speech. This little act of memorization appears to me to instill confidence in the students that they can master history, once they get it done.
To that end, I discovered a good, ten-minute piece on the address in Ken Burns’ “Civil War” (in Episode 5). On DVD, it’s a good piece for classroom use, short enough for a bell ringer or warm-up, detailed enough for a deeper study, and well done, including the full text of the address itself performed by Sam Waterson.
Edward Everett, the former Massachusetts senator and secretary of state, was regarded as the greatest orator of the time. A man of infinite grace, and a historian with some sense of events and what the nation was going through, Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day after their speeches:
“I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
Interesting note: P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula notes that the Gettysburg Address was delivered “seven score and four years ago.” Of course, that will never happen again. I’ll wager he was the first to notice that odd juxtaposition on the opening line.
Resources for students and teachers:
- Today in History, November 19, from the Library of Congress’s American Memory Collections
- Ken Burns’ “Civil War” on PBS
- AmericanRhetoric.com, four audio versions of the Gettysburg Address, including Sam Waterston, and Johnny Cash
- Abraham Lincoln On-line, with extensive list of sites relating to the Gettysburg Address
- Gettysburg College, Civil War Institute and Civil War Programs (annual program commemorating the Gettysburg Address)
- Walk with Lincoln in Gettysburg, an interestingly complete stroll through the history of the battle and the creation of the cemetery, and Lincoln’s address
- Full text of Edward Everett’s two-hour oration at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863
- Sam Waterson performs the Gettysburg Address, at NPR (2003)
- An account from an eyewitness of the speech, via the Library of Congress
- Gettysburg Address exhibit at Library of Congress on-line
- “273 Words to a New America” at the Library of Congress; Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub repost of that item
- Chamblee 54 wins the best blog post title award: “Seven score and seven years ago”
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] is also confusion about what happened to the original text that the President read from. HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer is […]
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[…] is also confusion about what happened to the original text that the President read from. HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer is […]
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[…] is also confusion about what happened to the original text that the President read from. HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer is […]
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I came across your post recently and thought you might be interested in some information on the following title that we published:
Book: Abraham Lincoln and the Structure of Reason
Authors: David A. Hirsch and Dan Van Haften
Website: http://www.thestructureofreason.com/
The authors broke “Lincoln’s code” regarding how he wrote his speeches. Unknown to previous Lincoln scholars, he used a regular template and it is replicable. Anyone can do it. The authors prove it in their book, explain it line by line, and show you how it is done. Now anyone can speak and argue like Lincoln.
Authors Hirsch and Van Haften persuasively argue, for the first time, that it was Lincoln’s in-depth study of geometry that gave our sixteenth president his verbal structure. In fact, conclude the authors, Lincoln embedded the ancient structure of geometric proof into the Gettysburg Address, the Cooper Union speech, the First and Second Inaugurals, his legal practice, and much of his substantive post-1853 communication.
There is an interview that we conducted with the authors posted on our website here: http://savasbeatie.com/authors/author_interview.php?&authorID1=DAHirsch&authorID2=DVHaften&authorID3=empty&authorID4=empty&authorID5=empty
And this article about the book recently came out in the Chicago Daily Herald: http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20110212/news/702129924/#ixzz1DnyQRijU
Please let me know if you would be interested in any content from the book (excerpt, author interview, etc.) for your blog or a guest post/article by the authors and I would be happy to help.
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[…] been too bumpy to write. There is also confusion about what happened to the original text. HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress . Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer […]
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[…] Most of this post is reprinted with express permission from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. […]
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