The bugler’s call to assemble had sounded, wreaths had been laid, a choral society had sung and dignitaries had spoken, all on a blood-consecrated hill in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.
All to commemorate the 161st anniversary of the speech that came to epitomize what it meant to be presidential.
On Nov. 19, 1863, on this very hill, President Abraham Lincoln unfolded his six-foot-four frame to stand and dedicate a national soldiers’ cemetery made necessary by the horrific Battle of Gettysburg just four months earlier.
His 272 words became a civic prayer of unity and purpose for a nation riven by civil war: the Gettysburg Address.
He, too, is bearded, but he grew up in the borough of Queens, not the woods of Kentucky, and he stands five-foot-nine, maybe.
Persons:
Abraham Lincoln, Harold Holzer
Organizations:
Gettysburg
Locations:
Pennsylvania, Gettysburg, Queens, Kentucky