the most important issue congress should address next year? include c-span programming for your chance to win the grand prize of $5,000. with $100,000 in total prizes. get more info at studentcam.org. next, on the civil war, author, historian, and co-director of the lincoln study center douglas wilson delivers the gettysburg address on november 18th, 1863. mr. wilson considers several facets of the address, including the context in the war in 1863. and how it would have sounded when delivered by president lincoln, versus how it reads on paper. and how its meaning and interpretation have evolved over time. the lincoln group of the district of columbia hosted this event. it's about 1 hour and 10 minutes. [ applause ] >> thank you very much, craig.

it's a pleasure to be back here. i remember when i first made my brash entrance into the lincoln field, one of the first invitations i got was from this group. and i remember that what i had to say astonished many people, but they were polite. and steve carson made me squirm for my dinner by asking hard questions, but he, too, was a good -- he was very dubious about what i was saying. i'm pleased to report that our friend, the late steve, told me not too long before he died, really, that he remembered that session, and he was gracious enough to say that his doubts had been -- that he agreed with me, what i was arguing about.

and of course, it was, as craig says, only a few years ago that we were honored, my partner and i were honored for our editorial work by this group, and it was -- it's something that we are very proud of. and i can't thank you enough for that honor. you may not think that i've done you any favor of talking about the gettysburg address. everybody knows the gettysburg address. most of you can recite it, i'm sure. it's the most famous speech in the world. a lot of people think it's the best speech in the world. it's storied. there are endless mythology about it. and i know that the myths irritate some serious historians, but i think it's all part of the landscape. if you're going to have something great, it's going to

have myths grow up around it. and that's just a sign that people take it seriously. it's one way to take something like the gettysburg address seriously. so with my apologies, i want to try and say something about the gettysburg address. but rather than read you a paper, i thought i would try to see if we could do this as kind of an open conversation. and while i'd be glad to take questions at the end, as is usual, i thought i would try doing it in an open fashion, so that if what i'm talking about prompts a question, if you raise your hand, and ask the question, if it doesn't lead us too far astray, i'd be glad to get involved in a conversation. but of course, i warn you, if i discover that we're going hopeless

hopelessly off-subject, and the time limit, i'll cut you off and go on with the presentation. so the gettysburg address is something special, something unique. and we're getting ready to celebrate its 150th anniversary. and we've had enough good books about the address in the last 20 or 25 years, that we know quite a bit about it. one of the last books that we had by gabor, borette, did a marvelous job of knowing what happened from the time the speech was given to the point it had become iconic. it took a while, if you remember. and he laid that out very nicely for us. and so it hasn't always had the stature that we give it now. it couldn't have had.

but it's interesting to see the way in which -- or think about the way in which it's been held down through the years. it's probably the most mythologized of our most historical speeches. i consider it the high-water mark of american history. i've studied jefferson and the declaration, and in a way it isn't fair to compare these things, but important as the declaration was, i think the gettysburg address is even more important. and i'll try to tell you something about that as i go along. so, what i want to do is i know that a lot of you know it, and you should be proud of that, or if you're prompted, you can kind of get on the text and stay with it. so i'm going to read it slowly. i'll start the first sentence, and then i hope that the people who know the words can go along.

we kind of get a chorus going here, get the base voices going over here, and some higher tenor abraham lincoln voices going with it, and see what it sounds like. 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. wow, this is terrific. but, that's only the first sentence. okay. who knows how the next sentence begins. anybody? now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. great. next line.

we are met upon a great battlefield 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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. the brave men 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 nob nobley advanced. it is 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, which the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. that's very good. that's very good. once you get in somebody else's character, you can jump on every once in a while. so we all know it. now, that is one version of the gettysburg address, right? that's the final text. that's the last text that he wrote. believe me, if he had kept official copies, it would have changed a little bit. but it wouldn't have changed very much. i think he's very incapable of

doing it the same way. he always has another thought, and he sees nothing wrong with putting the comma over here, or changing the position of this word, if he thinks it would be better. he doesn't have the sense that he wants it frozen. which i think is probably a good idea. let me just touch on a few places, i'm sure some of you are well aware as i am of some of these parts of the speech. which parts were different, in some other version than the ones that we had. you may know that on this continent, and upon this continent, he couldn't decide what he wanted. and maybe the next one, if he had done another version would have been -- he would have gone back to upon. but he went back and forth on that one. he originally wrote, if we assume that the nikolai version is the oldest version, and i do,

he originally wrote, we have come to dedicate. but apparently at gettysburg, he wrote, he said, he repeated what he had said in the sentence before, we are met. we are met to dedicate. and in revising it, he saw that his first thought was the best. rather than repeat we are met, it somehow works better to say, we have come. and i think what's really remarkable is that he started with the sentence that we know as, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, originally said, this we may in all propriety do. that's a pentameter. it's flat. i think he had an affinity for pentameter. but that doesn't always mean

that it always raises the level, the poetic level. in this case, this is a flat lin line. nobody would choose that. although fitting and proper is a cliche in many ways. somehow if you can use a familiar phrase in the right place, it works very well. it's interesting that lincoln in all the versions that we have in his hand, always says, we cannot dedicate. two words, we cannot. the newspapers always put that together. the newspaper version always say cannot. but if you say them both and you try them and see, there's a difference. especially in a speech like this. we cannot dedicate. also, seeing the value of a

change originally he wrote, the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, while it can never forget what they did here. but the "while" isn't very strong. so he changes it to "but." and so we get that really memorable line. and the "but" helps us see and feel the two parts of the sentence. and as you know, the oldest version, the nicolay version is on executive mansion letterhead. and then it's connected to a live size sheet in pencil rather than pen. so what we have are almost certainly two parts, the first page of one draft, which used to

have another second page, and the second page of a different draft that was originally in pencil. and this juncture is part of the -- if you're interested in the text, and the growth of the text and so forth, part of the puzzle about the fact that nicolay, his secretary, claimed he was there, when lincoln put the finishes touches on his speech at gettysburg. and that he had that draft in the papers of lincoln. and he produces them. and argues even that they have folds, that somebody folded it up and put it in his pocket. the trouble is that he didn't say the words. he made big changes, like the one change where he completely threw out the sentence "this we may in all propriety do."

but it's not crossed off in the manuscript. and then there's a -- you know, the one point in the speech that i think gives one pause is he says the same thing twice. which you can do in a good speech, and make it better. but he says it awkwardly, it seems to me. if we can say anything in this really fantastic speech as awkward. but when he says, 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, and he said in the speech, carried on. he realized later on that he needed a stronger word, and he put in "advanced." but he said carried on. and then he almost repeats it. it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. the unfinished work, right?

but then somehow that sets up that really resonant series of that clause. so everything seems to be fine. it's interesting to me, although i don't believe that lincoln -- that the delivery manuscript that he held in his hand was the nicolay copy. for reasons that i'll say in a minute. but it does make sense that he has trouble getting -- if that were the case, it would explain why he has this sort of weak repetition of the unfinished work, the unfinished work, the great task remaining before us. it comes exactly at that point in the manuscript. in my analysis, i got interested in the kind of way that almost

musical notation that he uses the word "here." but that's a little technical. but i think he's the kind of rhetorician and rhetorical master who thought at that level. if there's one criticism that some people make it is that he took one of the "heres" out in the police version. in the everett and bancroft versions before, he had one more "here." for which they "here" gave the level of de voice. in the last one he took it out. i still seem to want to hear it. and then, there doesn't seem to be any doubt that he said "under god." there is a school of thought, or a position that says that he ad

libbed it. i don't think that's the case. but at any rate, he changed the position -- you know, he changed the position when he got to studying his text, getting ready to push it out in the world as an official text. all the reporters who reported -- who had access to the -- the reporter who access to the manuscript and the sen oh graphic reporter's report that he said that this nation shall under god have a new birth of freedom. and i can't quite tell whether we've simply become so habit habituated that we came to it, makes it the right choice. but it is an interesting choice, again. as one who studied the

manuscripts of lincoln's compositions, this is one of the really interesting things that -- the changes he tends to make are minor. and it changes the cadence. it changeses the sound a little bit. it doesn't do much, but all these little changes are the change of a person who is hearing what would be making fine discriminations about what would sound better. okay. what did lincoln really say? this is what he wrote in march, as a revision of his speech. the bliss copy states -- or dates from march. what did he say at gettysburg? this is where the controversy begins. and if you like the controversy, this is where the fun begins. clearly what we've just had, what we all know, what we can

recite, isn't exactly what he said at gettysburg. and i've already pointed out a few of these things. but the words that he uttered are still debated. they're going to go on being debated. but the argument, you would think that the argument would be settled now that we have -- we videotape everything. and if c-span doesn't videotape you, your uncle will, you know, with his phone. nothing goes unvideotaped anymore. but the interesting thing is that that doesn't solve the problem the way that you think it was. let me give you just a little example of my own experience. to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the lincoln-douglas debates, my partner and i at the lincoln study center determined that we

wanted to bring out a new edition of the lincoln-douglas debates. and they needed a new edition, because what we had before was simply lincoln's scrapbook where he cut out the chica"chicago t " tribune's" editions of his speeches and the chicago times' version of the debates. the debates in those days, even though they were supposed to be word for word, and so forth, they were heavily politicized. because even if the stenographer was honest and reported exactly what lincoln said, if the editors didn't like that, or thought it didn't sound right, or was a mistake, they'd take it out. we know this, because the other side didn't have the same impulse. they were working it the other way. as a matter of fact, they didn't work for the paper, they worked for doug lags. and lincoln was sure that they

were editing his stuff. and lincoln said i tried to get the reporter, who reported him for the tribune, to let me see his tra his transcriptions, but he wouldn't let me see them. the reporter who worked for the tribune was a very good reporter, he was very much in law of taking down transcriptions of important cases. so anyway, we wanted to have -- to be able to -- so we worked with both sides of the aisle, as it were. for our -- so, while we were working on it, we had the great good fortune at knox college to have two wonderful, inspiring commencement speakers within two or three years. the first was a guy that we had just sent to the u.s. senate from illinois in 2005.

and this was the guy who is now president, barack obama. and a few years later we had a former president bill clinton. and i was interested in the fact that the college taped this stuff, audio and video, and so i wanted to compare the transcriptions. in the case of clinton, they -- the clinton people sent us a copy of what he said. and then the college made a transcription, just from the videotape. and they didn't match. they weren't really far off, but they didn't match. because he didn't say exactly what was written in his speech. he did what most people do, and he ad libbed some. he probably ad libbed a good deal. anyway, it was -- what you could

see is that if you're trying to get the exact -- what they say precisely, i know what he said, i've got his own speech. where did you get it? from his headquarters. not a good idea. so the -- and one of the things that wasn't in the speech that i thought was unfortunate was that at the beginning of his speech he made some informal remarks which were complimentary to one of my books. and i thought that belonged in the speech. and i was disappointed that it wasn't in the official transcript. and obama's speech was very g d good. and not long afterwards, there was a -- an issue of "time" magazine dedicated to lincoln. and they asked a number of people to write about lincoln. and obama did. and he talked about what was going on in his mind when he's

sitting there watching the graduates march down the aisle and get ready for the program. and he said, what crossed my mind was, since he was -- i was sitting where abraham lincoln was trying to run for the senate, trying to beat the incumbent, douglas, and even though he lost, it made it possible for me to be here in the senate. which i thought was really remarkable. anyway, so what did lincoln say in the speech? well, we have five versions of it in his own hand. one of them is the earliest one that i talked about, the nicolay. but the ones that represent his attempt to put down an official version are known as the everett -- the bancroft and the bliss. which he did in february and march. that is to say, three to four

months after the speech. and we constantly have how he did this, what he used, suggests that he didn't go back to his own manuscript. or at least that's my sense of it. and the a.p. reporter who filed the speech that most newspapers use, says that he didn't have a full set of notes, because he got caught up in the moment, and that he simply copied lincoln's speech afterwards. so we have that text. and then we have a text by a very skilled stenographer, charles hale, who says that he got -- he was sure he got every word that lincoln said. and he couldn't file this with

his paper, because he got caught in a jam. he couldn't get it through the telegraph. the telegraph was full. then he got caught in a bottleneck on the road. so he didn't get his version in his paper. but he published it later. and if you compare the two, the one that the stenographer took down, and the a.p. reporter who said he copied lincoln's manuscript, they're within a phrase or two the same text. this is fatal to the idea that he had the nicolay in his hand, which is missing a good bit of material, and has some other stuff. and he would have to ad lib a good many things. so there isn't much doubt in my mind. but let me tell you about the newest book of the -- about the writing of the gettysburg

address. and it is, i think, the most ambitious book by martin p. johnson, called "the writing of the gettysburg address." i've had occasion to read over the years, and it's been a number of years, his articles that he's written on various parts of -- aspects of the address. and i've also had the good fortune to read his book, which is just out, with some care, because i was reading it before it came out. and it is a very good book. it is certainly the most ambitious study of the address that we've had in a long, long time, and probably it's the most ambitious of all of them. and it tells us a lot of interesting things. and clears up some puzzles, and adds some things -- gives us a lot of new interesting things to

think about. and so i just wanted to say a few words about that, because it's a book that you're going to be reading reviews of very soon. and i think it is a worthy effort. let me give you an example of a couple of the things that he does, that i think are really contributions to the study of the gettysburg address. he explains, i think, better than anybody ever has, and it took a loot of time to look into the way the telegraph system worked, how the newspapers used it, how things were transcribed, sent. what he shows us is that some of the strange errors that occur in the telegraphic accounts are a result of the telegraph kind of incremental errors that are made

along the way. so that the philadelphia papers, who -- i've forgotten the route that they were on, but at any rate, they're the most accurate because there were the fewest telegraphic glitches in it. and it tells you how telegraphic glitches down the road that the editors reading this saying, this must mean this, and so forth. so you get all these strange reports of the gettysburg address that are faulty because of the telegraph transmission. but you can use the telegraph transmission because they had four lines, one that went out to the north, the boston area, one that went to the new york area, one went south through baltimore, and one went west toward chicago. but the western one, the lines were so busy, they couldn't get

theirs sent the first day, so they didn't send it until the second day. so this kind of information is interesting. we've always felt that these telegraphic errors are obscuring our perfect vision of what lincoln actually said. but he helps a great deal with that. another thing that i think is really interesting is he gives us a rationale for the hague manuscript. i wish i gave power point lectures so i could put up on the screen and you could see the difference between the hay manuscript and the nicolay manuscript. they're lincoln's secretaries, why aren't they the same. we don't know. but probably the hay manuscript is a document that lincoln used in trying to work up an official version that he was going to send to edward everett, the guy

who gave the big oration at gettysburg, because he had requested it. he said, i'm going to put the manuscript in my oration. i'd like to have the manuscript of your talk and i'm going to sell these for the benefit of the soldiers, sanitary commissioner. so he said fine, i'll do that. lincoln didn't send him the delivery manuscript. why not? well, he didn't seem to have it. the guy who ran the cemetery dedication, david wills, had written him and asked him if he would donate the original manuscript. but lincoln was sick in bed at that time. you may remember, he came home sick from gettysburg. he had a minor version of smallpox. but he had to go to bed. so he wasn't doing much business. and he doesn't seem to have

gotten around to working with the text until everett asked him in january to send him something. so i think that this -- this isn't the -- this doesn't seem to me to be the strength of martin johnson's book, because he -- he is working on an admirable principle. he said, look, why should we invent a lost manuscript if we have a manuscript that his secretary says is the manuscript that he finished in david wills' house and put it in his pocket and took out and read from at gettysburg. granted, it doesn't -- those aren't the words that he said at gettysburg, because the newspapers tell us that, but that's the manuscript. that way we don't have to invent one. well, i think we do need to invent one because if the a.p.

reporter says he copied it out and he filed the story and they sent it out, and it's just almost exactly word for word what the stenographer said he took down word for word, there's no room for the nicolay manuscript, in the way i see it. so i don't think this is the spent of the book. so i think in showing us how the hay manuscript makes perfect sense, it's hard to describe what's wrong with the hay manuscript, it has things that -- it seems to be a hodgepodge of manuscript things, from known manuscripts and things from known newspaper reports. so i think he makes a very good case, that the hay manuscript comes in, when lincoln is trying to get back what he said and ha he wants -- he knows that the newspapers pretty much have it, but he wants to test it against his other manuscripts, and that he's using the hay manuscript,

where some people have argued is the delivery manuscript. is the one. so i really think if you're interested in that kind of history of the text, he's got a very good explanation of the hay. much better, i think, than anyone had before. so i can say that. as i said, i think it's a very good book. very worthwhile. it is narrowly focused. he does have some interesting things to say about what happened at gettysburg, what lincoln did at gettysburg. and some other events. but mostly, he's talking about the text. and minutely going through accounts of what this person and what that person said, and what, if you put these two together, and discount for this, and so forth, what that might mean. that's heavy going.

it doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile, it just means that it isn't very entertaining to read. and it is, you know, it's like some legal problems, the law is so complicated, as john adams said, my head hurts trying to figure this out. and your head can hurt a little bit in some of these arguments. but i think he is definitely contributing a good deal. and anybody who works with this is going to have a much better understanding of the problems, and what the possible solutions are. so i commend the book. and i don't want to emphasize my misgivin misgivings, but i do think he's got the wrong delivery text. he has an interesting -- he makes an interesting point of some well-known testimony by james speed. speed was the attorney general in 1864, and he became attorney

general, and in talking with lincoln, lincoln told him about the gettysburg address, he says. this is 14 years later. but it's a very interesting account of what lincoln said. but it's taken by a reporter. these aren't speed's words, this is the reporter telling what speed said. when delivering an address, telling him what lincoln told him, when delivering the address on the occasion of the dedication of the national cemetery at gettysburg, he was very uncertain whether his duties would detain him at washington. but he was anxious to go. and he desired to be prepared to say some appropriate thing. the day before he left washington, he found time to write about half of a speech. he took what he had written with him to gettysburg. there he was put in an upper room in a house, and he asked to

be left alone for a time. he then, shortly before -- he then prepared his speech, but concluded it so shortly before it was to be delivered, he had no time to memorize it. after the speech was delivered, and taken down by reporters, he compared what he had actually said with what he had written. and the difference was so slight, that he allowed what he said to remain unchanged. a lot of what speed says here is corroborated. but i think that since johnson makes such a heavy use of this, this is kind of an outline of his book, as he says. he's gotten this story, and he thinks it has a beginning and a middle and an end. and that he uses it as kind of an outline. but i don't think he takes into account the fact that there are these difficulties.

i mean, it's a great piece of testimony. but testimony always has problems. i'm not going to go into that any further. except to recommend the book, if you're interested in the textural history. but here's the real controversy. and it isn't such a -- it isn't such an energetic controversy as the textural controversy sometimes becomes. and that is, what is the gettysburg address about? what is lincoln trying to say? what's the most important message for americans then? and what is its most enduring message? now, those things are worth thinking about. consider the setting in 1863. and johnson's book is very good

on this. but gabor -- gabor's book is even better. setting the scene after the battle, the armies leave. of course, the confederate wounded are all left behind. that they couldn't take. and the union army can only take so many. and so the people of gettysburg are left to tend the wounded. the dead are simply lying out there on the ground by the thousands. and the horses. and of course, all the broken and abandoned implements of war st strey the battlefield. and for a while, it was dangerously bad.

they had to get the bodies buried. it was not a pretty scene. by the time, four months later, when they had the ceremony, they had gotten on top of the burial to a large extent. but consider that the people there were -- there were lots of soldiers who came. just on their own time. soldiers on leave. veterans of the battle, if they could get away, they came. there were a lot of them. relatives, widows, orphans of the people who were dead. it was a very somber occasion. and this is something that when we're looking at it on the page is hard to con texturalize. but it was the kind of occasion that everybody wept. the guy who gave the prayer was a famous preacher for prayers.

and he did himself proud. and everybody wept. in the middle of everett's very affecting two-hour oration, the president seemed to be mopping his tears. and then when lincoln read his -- especially the second part of his address, you can imagine what it was like for people for whom this is a somber occasion, like a funeral, for lincoln to say that these dead have not died in vain. as the -- i like to point to the comment of george william curtis in harper's, just two weeks after the address, he says, it's the kind of thing that you -- that kindles emotion. you can't read it without feeling something, without feeling something strong. and for people who were involved

in this way, it would have been clearly for them, it was about the sacrifice of those men, those people who died for the cause. that's what the gettysburg address meant to them. and i think for the veterans for years and years and years, and the relatives, people, who continued to decorate graves and so forth, it was for a long time, that's what it was. it was about the soldiers who died at the battlefield. the one that -- the other -- the other theme is the preservation of the union, of course. lincoln is saying the war is about the preservation. war is about the preservation of the union. that's what we're doing. this is what he said to greeley

who was criticizing him for not moving faster on slavery. it's on what will preserve the union. if i free some and not others, he had already made up his mind to do. so the preservation of the union had been a national issue -- a strong national issue, growing national issue, got fierce in the '50s. but it went back at least to the webster-hague debate in the 1830, a debate that lincoln would have memorized. and his contemporaries. and that would have been something like their gettysburg address. and at the level of the public's understanding, i think, insofar as they could divorce their own

grief, personal grief, the cause that lincoln talks about without naming, would have been the preservation of the union. the new birth of freedom caught people's attention. and certainly for people who thought that the whole point of the war was to end slavery, but that this is what lincoln is talking about. a new birth of freedom. certainly he invites that interpretation. the demise of slavery was foreshadowed. the gettysburg was being looked upon as a turning point. it wasn't clear yet that they were going to prevail, but this was certainly the hope. and i think that increasingly, it became more and more important. the new birth of freedom is the signal that this -- that the real issue is slavery. certainly in our own time, the fact that the war was about slavery, which lincoln says in

his second inaugural, has come back very strong. people have forgotten that the war was about slavery, it wasn't about these other extraneous things. so i think that's the one that's strongest right now. but i want to close by suggesting that it's real important in the larger picture, the larger controversy might be two things. one is, the reinterpretation of the declaration of independence. and gary wills' book gives voice to this, the words that remade america. gary wills, remember, wrote a great book about jefferson in the '70s. one of the things he pointed out very strongly was, that it's just silly for people to think that i'm making that too strong, but that people thought that

they didn't -- they didn't think about all men are created equal as much as jefferson, 18th century idea about natural rights, they think about what lincoln says about people in general. and that lincoln -- this isn't what the declaration said. i think people agreed with that, except that i think what wills is saying in this -- in the second book is, so he reinterpreted it. so he gave us a new interpretation of the declaration. so that's great. historically, it may not be accurate, or it may have a lot of problems, a lot of baggage historically, but that's what people think. it changed people's way of thinking about the whole idea of natural rights, all men are created equal.

i certainly subscribe to that. i'm of a mind that lincoln -- that lincoln thought longest and hardest about this first sentence. because i think he was trying to write a sentence that even his demograph demographic -- democratic opponents who hated the war, who hated him, and what he was trying to do, and that they started a partisan war, republican war, dragged the country into this kind of mess, that he had them in a kind of trap -- trap is a strange word, but for lack of a better -- he got them to agree that our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

yeah. but then the next sentence says, now we're engaged in a great civil war testing whether that -- and right there, the chicago "times" and the democrats are going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, we don't go along with that. it's too late. you've already gone along with the first premise. and that's the one that matters. at any rate, that's the way i've tried to make the case. i think lincoln himself would have been interested and sympathetic with all of those points of view, glad to lend his name and his words to most of it. but for himself, i think if you judge by what he says in the '50s, and ha he says in the first inaugural, about self-government, which is only

an experiment, democracies haven't worked, because it's not structured. b but -- so he avoids the word democracy by and large. he always says self-government. he said he always says self-government. he says slavery is wrong because that's not self-government. if somebody else rules you, you're not -- that's not self-government. so i think for him, especially the way he ends it, i think that he brings that home, because that's a larger goal. herndon says lincoln liked abstractions. i think of lincoln as this personable, warm, friendly guy. herndon points out he's always thinking in abstract terms. he has a very rangy mind.

and i think self-government is what he's talking about. that's why the speech ends by saying that these -- these men shall not have died in vein, 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 this earth. lincoln knew how to use the negative. if you really want to make that ending strong you don't say, we will continue to have self-government. you say not perish. and i think given what he was saying all through the '50s about the necessity of having equality, freedom, to have self-government, that's what he's talking about here. and that the european countries are very suspicious of this. they don't think this will work.

and, of course, we're still having that argument. but i really think that he lands on what may be for him would have been the most important part. so i think i'll stop there and see if you have any questions about this. [ applause ] >> okay. garret? >> yeah. doug, what would you say if i said that the gettysburg address was actually lincoln's abstract for his 1864 campaign re-election and that the gettysburg address was actually his first campaign speech? >> i don't know what i'd say. i'd have to think about that. i think that -- that people make a good point in saying one of the reasons he wanted to come to pennsylvania is you had to have pennsylvania to win the election. he's already thinking about the

election, '64. and he is up there talking to politicians. and consulting. he had to come to terms with curtain. curtain was ambitious. he thought maybe he could get -- beat lincoln out of a second term. he was one of many. so that he went up to -- that he did political fence-mending and that kind of thing on his gettysburg trip, certainly. that it was the opening shot of his campaign, i'd have to think about that. do you have an idea? >> well, it just seems that when you really read the gettysburg address, i mean, you're thinking about the 13th amendment. you're thinking about all of the other things that he accomplished in his second term, which really the gettysburg address supported very broadly. but it's almost like an abstract outline. just a thought.

>> okay. >> okay. who else? yes? don? >> going back to the battle, couple days after the battle, lincoln is talking at the white house about 87 years ago and this isn't the right time for my speech but we need to have a time for a speech. >> the july -- >> on july 7th. >> the july 7th speech. >> and then later in the summer, governor curtain comes to washington a couple of times. it is not until november 2nd that the formal invitation comes. what's the likelihood that lincoln really was, you know, setting up the invitation so he'd have the appropriate time to be able to make those remarks and that he was thinking through all those months from july until november about what he'd say? >> very good. i'm with you all the way.

i try to make the case in my book "lincoln's sword" that we have good evidence, once we've looked at the right places, that lincoln was a very deliberate creator of his own speeches. he didn't say stuff off the top. and herndon describes how he wrote the house divided speech. he says he kept writing little notes to himself and little -- tear off a scrap of paper and write something down. he kept all those things in his hat. when it came time to write the speech, he said he turned the hat over on the table, dumped all these out, and then he started arranging them, and then he numbered them and then he wrote out his speech. now, that would be an anomaly if it weren't for the fact that we have other examples. and i could give them to you, but i just -- i'll just tell you

the people who talk about this pattern. his son robert says this is a way his father wrote, by making little notes on scraps of paper. i just said his law partner. his secretary nikolay says the same thing, that he was always writing maybe just a word or phrase or something on a scrap of paper. and mr. slade, mr. slade, his butler, says that he was always collecting these little pieces of paper that mr. lincoln had written on and helping him keep track of them by rounding them up and handing them back to him. there's no question he did that. now, he gives the speech july 7th as he said. he says to the audience, what a glorious thing, on the fourth of july, the enemies of the declaration that says all men are equal, on the birthday of the declaration, the enemies of

equality turned tail and ran. and he says, this is a glorious theme, and i'm just not prepared to give it right now. you can't tell me that he hasn't got already in his hat -- it turns out that in the presidency he used a drawer, a certain drawer in his desk to put all this in. he once described to someone, i really liked that letter you wrote. he said, when it came time to write it, i had it all right here and showed him. the idea of -- this is one place where i disagree with martin johnson. he says, this speech he didn't -- he had no preparation. he wasn't thinking about writing a speech until he got the invitation. he was busy. he had to write it on very short notice and so forth. i can't believe that that squares with what we know about the way he habitually wrote and that he had a speech about equality, about all men are

created equal, that he had been dying to give since the '50s. he probably had notes on it for then. so, i'm persuaded that he, as you say, took advantage. this would be the perfect place to give my speech. but then, of course, you've got to get it written. and so, he determines he's going to make it short and then he makes the discovery that we all make. it takes more time to be brief than to write a long piece. so, you make a great point and i would agree that he had been thinking a long time about this subject. he says the central idea of american politics is equality. and one of the things he talks about is that even with -- got all of these immigrants in his

time, and the politicians worry about it because they want to know how the people are going to vote and so forth. but he says that even though these people can't identify with the revolutionists, the way we all do, because they all thought about the revolution all the time, he says, when they hear us talk about all men are created equal, that resonates -- that's not his word, but that's what he means -- that resonates with him and they identify with it and they endorse it. so, the idea that equality is the most important, most revered resonant thing in american politics is one of his basic ideas and it's right there in the first sentence. >> edgar. >> yes. growing up, i had always read speech, most people and most

newspaper accounts, other than hale, did not think much of the speech. is that, in fact, true? and at what time or what point did people awaken to the fact that it was a great speech? >> the speech had admirers immediately and prominent ones. the one that was most gratifying to lincoln, as you know, is edward everett himself. the nation's most esteemed orator, and he said to lincoln, you said more in two minutes about the subject than i said in two hours. something like that. he valued that very much. he showed that letter to people. something that he didn't usually do. but certainly it was a somber occasion. it wasn't an occasion where people throw their hats up in the air. and so, it was. there wasn't a big demonstration. but it was well noticed in various places.

and this gives me an opportunity to read the view of sumner that i had intended to finish with but i got in a hurry. trying to be brief. sumner said, joshua speed, lincoln's kentucky friend, said that -- in his memo, i wanted to record what sumner had told him about the gettysburg address. sumner said, of all the speeches he had ever read in any language, letting you know that he was a linguist, he read a lot of languages, by any man living or dead he thought lincoln's gettysburg speech was the greatest. remember, this guy's not entirely friendly to lincoln and he's certainly a guy that did not like the second inaugural. malice toward none? no way. i want to go down and hang those guys.

he said, lincoln said the world will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. sumner said the speech would live when the memory of the battle would be lost. or only remembered because of the speech. >> yeah? >> yes. i am william redd from pennsylvania and i have two questions. during the first years of the civil war, abraham lincoln avoided saying it was a civil war. right? and then in the gettysburg address he admits it really is a civil war. and what did lincoln mean when he said a new birth of freedom? i think you mentioned that but i think you -- or i think you

might want to review it again. >> yes. and i think a new birth of freedom does resonate about slavery and he's not going to come right out and say that because that would -- he's trying to get people to come together on first principles. that's his whole strategy as a politician. don't alienate people. talk about what you agree on. when they were starting the republican party, he said don't disagree in public. just talk about what we really agree on and then they'll remember what we stand for but if you bicker all the time you -- so but i do think that the new birth of freedom applies also to the idea of self-government. the idea that the cause of self-government is what is the large he thing that we're doing here because it involves the

whole future, the whole of the world. i think that's a good point. i don't think he'd like to talk about it as a civil war but eventually he came around to it. he couldn't get his generals to stop talking about our territory and their territory. and he kept saying, it's all our territory. those people are americans. they're on american soil. they're just in rebellion. we want to talk them out of it or fight them out of it. we want to get back. and of course, the thing i think that resonates so much with lincoln and the world is he did not do what sumner and so many people thought he should do, which is to go down south and hang all those people who are responsible. he said, let's just obey the law and go back to doing what we were. >> ma'am?

>> well, i'm sure that everyone in here as a child was required to -- or to remember the gettysburg address. and do you endorse that now for children in school? >> you know, i'm a great believer in memorization. that's maybe because it worked for me. it was the -- it was prominent. we have gradually gotten away from that. but, no, i think memorizing things is useful. i know all kinds of people who tell me that having memorized so much poetry when they were young and in love with poetry, that they can continue to enjoy that. drive down the road and recite the ode of the grecian urn. that's fun. it's very satisfying. >> what was the response that the confederacy had toward the gettysburg address? how did the confederacy respond to it?

>> you know, i have never looked into that. you know, i think civil war studies are so much union based that we don't hear enough about that. i think there's a lot to be learned from knowing what was going on in the south and what people were saying and what they were thinking. we can just about predict some of the things that they said. it's not likely that they'd said very complimentary things because what you said in private's very different than what you would say in the press. the press is going to take the national line as it were. but lincoln does not rule out the valor or good intentions or whatever else about the confederacy and the battle. the battle is -- is decisive.

and the good guys as far as he was concerned won. but he doesn't -- see, in case lincoln couldn't come, they contacted seward and said would you be ready with a speech? in in case the president can't come. well, we know what -- he did -- he gave it the night before. it's a standard kind of speech where he talks about the wickedness and of the opponents. just completely the opposite of the way lincoln talked about the opponents. and i think that what we have -- what people believe is that lincoln got better results. frederick douglas says, we opposed him for all those years but he finally got done what we couldn't do because we didn't have the right method. we were just antagonizing people but they were doing more than that, of course. they were keeping the cause alive of freedom and the

destruction of slavery. but lincoln was trying to figure out how you did that, how you could get that done and still have a country. still not shatter the sense of being a nation. >> yes, sir? >> do you agree with gary wells that the gettysburg address is responsible for capitalization of the "t" in the united states? >> the capitalization of -- >> the "t." it's the united states as opposed to united states. >> i'm not so keen on that as i think of sandburg's way. he says before they said the united states are. and after the war, we say united states is. i would put it that way.

but i think the -- probably the idea is the same. >> anybody else? okay. thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> american history tv will be at the soldiers national cemetery at gettysburg national military park in pennsylvania this coming tuesday to cover the commemorative ceremony marking the 150th anniversary of abraham lincoln's gettysburg address. speakers include civil war historian and author james mcpherson and interior secretary sally jewel. you can watch the ceremony on thanksgiving day, thursday, november 28th at 4:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern time. here on american history tv. on c-span3.