November 19 · This Day in America
Four and a half months after the bloodiest battle ever fought on this continent, the dead are being reburied on the ground where they fell. Some ten thousand people gather to dedicate the Soldiers' National Cemetery. The famous orator Edward Everett speaks for two hours. Then President Abraham Lincoln stands and speaks for barely two minutes — about 270 words. He does not recount the battle. He says the war is a test of whether a nation "conceived in Liberty" can endure, and he asks the living to finish the work the dead began, so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He sits down so quickly some think he has failed. He has just told the country what it is for.
Source: www.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1863
Edward Everett delivered the day's official address — more than two hours of polished oratory before Lincoln's brief remarks. The next day he wrote the President a note that has outlasted his own speech: "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." Lincoln, who feared the speech a failure, kept the letter for the rest of his life.
Source: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org
“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.”Edward Everett to Abraham Lincoln, 1863