In describing the largest and most costly conflict in the history of The United States, the right words can sometimes be difficult to find. Time has given us the luxury of perspective that no one alive as it occurred enjoyed. So much has been written, analyzed, rewritten and reanalyzed about it that a clear, concise description of the true reason that six hundred-thousand Americans were killed is usually slow in coming. Discussions about it routinely become bogged down in statistics and descriptions of battles, which while significant, rarely delve into the conflict's meaning. With these struggles still present a century and a half after the conflict, it is easy to see why many Americans who lived during it struggled to comprehend the Civil War that was raging around them and delivering death and destruction at an almost unbearable rate. Effective leadership in such conflicts requires an ability to both disregard emotion and embrace it, along with an ability to find the root of conflict and remain focused on resolving it. When words become too emotional or unemotional, the essence of a problem is lost, and the words themselves become lost and forgotten by history. It is when those in positions of power use their influence through their words that history is made, great leaders are recognized, and great conflicts are given perspective. It is during these times of great confusion and desperation that reaffirmation of a country's core values and its greater purpose as a means to improve the lives of its citizens in the presence of so much death can unite an entire nation. Perhaps no better example of such a situation and such words came about on November 19th, 1863, at the dedication of a cemetery in the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
By all accounts, 1863 was not an easy time to be the President of the United States. The war between the states which had remained loyal to Washington, D.C and those who had formed their own confederacy led from Richmond, Virginia had reached its third year and had grown to proportions which were unthinkable at its onset. What was supposed to be a small, limited conflict now pitted two of the largest land armies in history against each other. As with most American wars, the tactics were slow to adjust to the technological advances in weaponry, which would lead to a series of disastrous confrontations. American ingenuity took American lives at a frightening pace as muskets and artillery designed during the Revolutionary War were being quickly replaced by more effective killing machines like the Henry Repeating Rifle and the Gatling Rotary Cannon. The generally accepted military procedure to that point had been to mass men in lines and march toward the enemy to engage in mostly hand-to-hand combat. This practice would be used with disastrous effect throughout the war, and southern commanders like Nathan Bedford Forrest, who employed alternative strategies such as cavalry flanking, were extremely successful in negating the North's daunting advantage in sheer numbers.
The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the most brutal and ultimately pivotal confrontations in the course of the war. Southern general Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia north to invade Pennsylvania, which southern leaders hoped would earn European support for the confederacy, which supplied much of Europe with its abundance of cheap, slave-harvested cotton. Gettysburg, a small college town forty miles south of the state capitol of Harrisburg would become the scene of a truly historic struggle as Lee's forces dug in and awaited the arrival of Union General George G. Meade's forces. From July 1-3 of 1863, the fields outside of Gettysburg would play host to a sprawling battle that would yield 51,000 casualties. The final, and ultimately most costly maneuver of the battle by Lee would come to be known as Pickett's charge, which saw one of The Army of Northern Virginia's most successful divisions practically annihilated. George Pickett, the Confederate Major General for whom the offensive would be named, never forgave Robert E. Lee for the mistake, which would be one of the few military miscalculations Lee would ever admit to. The defeat at Gettysburg pushed the Confederate forces off of Union territory for the remainder of the war, and as such would come to be considered by many as the central turning point of the entire conflict.
In November of that year, it was decided by the community of Gettysburg to construct a large, official cemetery to act as a proper resting place for the 7,550 men who perished there during the battle. The dedication ceremony was scheduled for November 19th, with Edward Everett, a widely renowned speaker and former senator, designated to be the featured orator. President Abraham Lincoln was invited comparatively as an afterthought, and would speak second. Everett's speech lasted approximately two hours, and was met with generally positive reception from the crowd . Lincoln then rose and spoke for barely two minutes, saying:
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 honored 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.
Applause was relatively light. There were no great rousing cheers from the 15,000 in attendance. Many seemed surprised and somewhat disappointed. The cameraman, who had expected to be able to prepare and focus his camera during a lengthy speech, was only able to snap a blurry picture of the president as he exited the stage. Lincoln himself felt his words were not well received. One Harrisburg newspaper called the president's speech "silly" and that it would soon vanish behind the "veil of oblivion." A writer at the Chicago Times used the unconventional use of the president's time in the national spotlight to point out how uncultured he seemed to many in high society. Describing his words as "dish-watery utterances," the article would go on to describe Lincoln as "the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as President of the United States."
Obviously historical consensus has proven these to be examples of short-sighted journalism, but important nonetheless. Lincoln was not entirely given to Presidential traditions, particularly in presentation. He was sometimes rumpled, always sported a beard, and was known to be ungainly and even clumsy at times. Those who could not see through these assaults on presidential grace felt that regardless of the precise and beautifully crafted words that routinely flowed from him, Lincoln was at best a well-meaning simpleton unequal to the task before him. These comments on perhaps the greatest speech ever given speak to the enormous pressures under which Lincoln operated continuously as he struggled to keep the nation, and himself at times, focused on the ideas he outlined at Gettysburg.
Positive reviews of the speech were more common. Many in attendance and many who would later read the transcript latched onto its clarity and lack of frivolity and pomp that was common in oratory at that time. Though it did not seem that way initially, Lincoln had summed up an entire nation's essence in two minutes at a time when many had begun to doubt whether the nation had an essence at all. The address would later be and still is often quoted by politicians and common Americans alike. Many who were in attendance at the ceremony were family members of soldiers who had died in the battle. Lincoln's simple, straightforward speech seemed disingenuous at first, but most understood his message: the devotion and memory of those who died could only properly be honored through an even greater dedication to not only completing the task they set out to do, but to create a society even more firmly based in the principles upon which it was founded. Volumes of meaning had been boiled down into a two minute speech. This is a feat which cannot be understated given the political and emotional climate of the time.
Perhaps the thread that ties every important theme of the Civil War together has been the struggle to define our value on human life as Americans. Lincolns words, when interpreted through the lense of slavery, spoke to the heart of what was dividing the nation: the subjugation and exploitation of an entire race. From the perspective of American families who had sent sons to war, the speech declared the invaluable nature of the young men who had given their lives for a cause they knew was more important than states rights. The higher, nobler purpose of the conflict was to recognize the failure of the United States to fulfill the promise upon which it was founded. If a meaningful solution to this problem was not found through this conflict, Lincoln argued, then battles like the one at Gettysburg were little more than young men killing each other for petty political squabbles. This, Lincoln knew, was unacceptable to the thousands of Americans that now lived without husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. Through his words, Abraham Lincoln gave hope to Americans that through their "increased devotion," they could ensure that their lives, the lives of the thousands who were still yet to die, and those whose lives were wasting away in chains were and are of value. It would require five years and six hundred thousand lives to achieve Lincoln's vision. Perhaps Edward Everett captured the essence of the Gettysburg Address best in a letter to Lincoln the next day: “I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Everett knew, as most Americans would soon know, that the world would indeed long remember what was said that day in Gettysburg, as it would long remember the man who said them.
