Lincoln dedicated a battlefield in about two minutes
On this day · 19 November 1863
Asked for "a few appropriate remarks," Lincoln spoke just 272 words — and redefined what the Civil War was for.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the ground where one of the war’s bloodiest battles had been fought months earlier.
Lincoln was not even the main attraction. The orator Edward Everett spoke for roughly two hours. Lincoln followed with about 272 words, finishing in roughly two minutes — so briefly that a photographer reportedly missed the shot.
Everett wrote the next day: “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
In those few sentences, Lincoln recast the war as a test of whether a nation “conceived in Liberty” could endure, and pledged that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The brevity was the point, and it became one of the most quoted speeches in history.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
