. >> start the first sentence and i hope the people that know the words can go along. we get a chorus going here. we get the bass voices going on here and some higher tenor, abraham lincoln voices going 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. that's only the first sentence. okay. who knows how the next sentence begins, anybody? >> now -- 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 -- 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 all together 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, 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. that's very good. that's very good. once you get in, somebody else -- you can jump on every once in a while. so we all know it. now, that is one version of the gettysburg address. that's -- that's the final text. that's the last text that the wrote. believe me, if he had kept making official copies it would have changed a little by i don't think it would have changed much. he is incapable of doing it the same way. he always has another thought and 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 as well aware as i am of these things. it is interesting. what parts of the speech were different in some other version than the ones that we had. you may know that on this dmoent and upon this continent he couldn't decide what he wanted and maybe the next one f he did another version, he would have went to upon but he went back and forth on he originally wrote if we assume the nikolai version is the oldest version, and i do, he originally wrote, we have come to dedicate, but apparently at gettysburg he said -- he repeated what he said in the sentence before "we are met, we are met to dedicate." in revising it, he saw his first thought was the best, rather than repeat we are met. it somehow works better to say we have come. i think what's really remarkable is that he started the sentence that we know as it is all together fitting and proper that we should do this originally said this we may in all pro pryty do. that's an iambic pin tammer the but it is flat. i think he had an affinity for am nick and perhaps even am nick pin tammer the but it doesn't mean it always raises the poetic level. in this case, it is a flat line. this we may in all propriety do. nobody would ever choose that over it is all together fitting and proper. although fitting and proper is a cliche by the way. a familiar phrase. somehow if you can use a familiar phrase in the right place it works very well. it's interesting that lincoln in all of 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 versions always say cannot. but if you say them both and you try them you see there is a difference, especially in a speech like. this we can not 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." so we get that really memorable line. the "but" helps us to see and feel the two parts of the sentence. as you know the oldest version the nikolai version is on executive mansion letter head. then its connected to a different size sheet, a sheet of fools cap in pencil rather than pen so that what we have are almost certain 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 makes -- is part of the -- if you are interested in the text and the girth of the text and so forth. part of the puzzle that nikolai, his secretary claimed he was there when lincoln put the finishing touches on his speech in gettysburg and that he had that draft in the papers of lincoln. and he produces them. and argues even that they have fold, as if 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 isn't crossed off in the manuscript. and then there's a -- you know, the one point in the -- in the speech that i think gives one pause is it -- 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 is awkward. but when he says it is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they whout w.h.o. thought here have thus so nobly and he said in the speech carry on. he realized later on he needed a stronger word and put in advanced. but he said carried on. then he almost repeats it. it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, the unfinished work. but then, somehow that sets up that really resonate series of that clauses. and so everything seems to be fine. it's interesting to me, although i don't believe that the delivery manuscript that he neld his hand was the nikolai 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 because it comes exactly at that noint the manuscript. in my analysis, in my book lincoln -- i got interested in the kind of way that almost musical notation that he uses the word here but that is a little technical. but i think he's the kind of ret rigs and rhetorical master who thought at that level and i think -- if there is one criticism that some people make it is that he took one of the here's out in this version, the bliss version. in the everett and the bank kroft versions that come before he had one more here. for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion n. 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 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 to the world as an official text. all the reporters, who reported -- who had access to the reporter who had access to the manuscript and the steno graphic reporter said that this nation shall under god have a new birth of freedom. and i can't quite tell whether we have simply become so habit waited to it becoming after, shall coming after than before makes it seem like 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 that he tends to make are minor and it changes the cadence. it changes the sound a little bit. it doesn't do much, but all of these little changes are the change of a person who's hearing what would be making, making fine discriminations what about would sound better. what did lincoln really say? this is what he wrote in march as a revision of his speech. the bliss copy states, dates from march. what did he say at gettysburg? this is where the controversy begins. if you like the controversy, this is where the fun begin s. clearly, what we have just had. what we all know, what we can recite isn't exactly what he said at gettysburg. i have already pointed out a few of these things, but the words that he uttered are still debated. they are 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. if c-span doesn't videotape you, your uncle will with his phone. nothing goes unvideotaped anymore. so -- but the interest ing thing is that doesn't solve the problem the way you think it was. let me give you a little example from my own experience. to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the lincoln-douglas debates, my partner and i at the lincoln study center determined we wanted to bring out a new edition of the lincoln-douglas debates and they needed a new edition where he cut out his speeches and the chicago times editions of douglas' speeches. and that's what we got for the debates. as you probably know, 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. in fact, they didn't work for the paper. they worked for douglas and lincoln was sure they were editing his stuff. and the truth is that lincoln says, i tried to get the reporter who reported him for the tribune to let me see his transcriptions but he couldn't let me see them. as we know, his reporter, who worked for the tribune was a very, very good reporter because he was very much in dmmd the law to take down transcriptions of important cases. so any way, we wanted to -- to be able to -- we worked with both sides of the aisle. 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 we had just sent to the u.s. senate from illinois in 2005. and this was the guy who was now president, barack obama. and a few years ago we had former president bill clinton. i was interested in the fact that the college taped the stuff, audio and video, and so i wanted to compare the transcriptions. in the case of clinton, 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. any way, it was -- what you could see is that if you try to get the exact -- what did he 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 written speech that i thought was unfortunate was at the beginning of his speech he made some informal remarks which already complimentary to my books which i thought that belonged in there and i was sappointed it fwhunt the official transcript. obama's speech was very good. not long afterwards, there was an issue of "time" magazine dedicated to lincoln and they asked a number of people to write about lincoln and obama did. he talked about what was going on in his mind when he's sitting there watching the graduates marng down the aisle and get ready for the program. and he said what crossed my mind 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. so any way, what did lincoln say in his speech? well, we have five versions of it in his own hand. one of them is the earliest one i talked about, the nikolai, 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 the concept we have of 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 ap reporter, who filed the speech that most newspapers used, says that he didn't have a full set of notes because he got caught up in the moment than he simply copied lincoln's speech afterwards. lincoln gave him permission to copy it. so we have that text. and then we have a text by a very skilled stenographer, charles hail, 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 grachlt couldn't get it through the telegraph and then got caught in a bottleneck in the railroad. couldn't get back to boston for several days. so he didn't get his version in his paper. but he published it later. if you compare the two, the one the stenographer took down and the ap reporter says he copied lincoln's manuscript, they are within a phrase or two the same text. this is fatal to the idea that he had the nikolai in his hand, which is miss 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 the most ambitious book by martin p. johnson. it is called writing the gettysburg address." . i have had occasion to read, over the years while he's been working on this, and it's been a number of years, his articles he's written on very aspects of the address and i have 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, up and it is a very good book. it is the most ambitious study of the address that we have had in a long, long time and probably the most ambitious of all of them. 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. so i just wanted to say a few words about this because it is a book you will 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 anyone has, that took a long time in top the way the telegraph system worked, how the newspapers used it, how things were transcribe canned, sent, and what he shows us is the that some of the strange errors that occur in the telegraphic accounts are a results of the telegraph incremental errors made along the way. so that philadelphia papers who had forgotten the route they were on -- at any rate, they are the most accurate because there are the fewest estelle graphic glitches in it. and it shows how telegraphic glitches down the road make people think the address, the editors reading this say this must mean this. so you get strange reports of the gettysburg address that are faulty because of the telegraph transition. you can use the telegraph transition because they had four lines, one ta went out to the north. the boston area. one that went to the new york area. one that went south through baltimore and one went west toward chicago. but the western one, lines were so busy they couldn't get theirs sent the first day. so they didn't send it until the second day. this kind of information is interesting wchl ve always felt these telegraphic errors are obscuring our perfect vision of what lincoln actually said. he helps a graet great deal with. that another thing that is i think is interesting is he gives us a rationale for the manuscript. i wish i gave power point lectures soy would put on the screen so you can see the difference between hay and lincoln manuscripts. they are lincoln's secretaries so why tlant the same? we don't know but probably the hay manuscript is probably 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 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 will sell these for the benefit of the soldiers and so lincoln said fine. i will 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, did wills had written him and asked if he would donate the original manuscript but lincoln was sick in bed at that time. you may remember he came home sick from gettys bumplg he had a minor version of smallpox, but he had to go to bed. so he wasn't doing much business. he doesn't seem to be working with the text until everett asked him in january to send him something. so, i think this -- this isn't -- this doesn't seem to me to be the strength of a martin johnson's book because he is working on an admirable principle. he says, loorks why should we invent a lost man you i script if we have a manuscript that his secretary says is the manuscript that he finished in david will's house and put it in his pocket and took out and read from at gettysburg? granted, those aren't the words he said at gettysburg because the newspapers tell us that but that is the manuscript. we don't -- that way we don't have toin vent one. well, i think we need to invent because because if the ap reporter says he copied it out and he's filed the story and they sent it out, and it's just almost exactly word for word what the stenographer says he took down word for word, there's no room for the nikolai manuscript n the way that i see it. so i don't think this is the strength of the book, but i think in showing us how the hay manuscript makes perfect sense. it is hard to describe what is wrong with the hay manuscript. it has things that -- it seems to be a hodgepodge of things from known manuscripts and things from known newspaper reports. so i think he makes a very good case the hay man jew you script comes in when lincoln is trying to get back what he said and what he wants. he knows the newspapers pretty much have it, but he wants to test it against his other manuscripts and he is using the hay manuscript -- which some people argued is the deliver riff manuscript. if you are interested in that kind of history of the text, he's got a very good explanation of the hay, much better, i think than any we have had before. so i can say that. as i said i think it is a very good boochblgt very worthwhile. it is narrowly focused. he has some interesting things to say about what happened at gettysburg. what lincoln did at gettysburg and other events b but mostly she talking about the text. minutely going through accounts of what this person said and what that person said and what, if you put these two together and discount for this, so forth, what that might mean. that's heavy going. doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile. it just means it isn't very entertaining to read. and it is, you know, it's like some legal problems the law is so complicated. as a john adam says my head hurts trying to figure this out. and your head can hurt a little bit in some of these arguments. i think he's definitely contributing a good deal. anybody who works with this will have a much better understanding of the problems and what possible solutions are. so i commend the book. and i don't want to emphasize my misgivings, but i 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. then he came to attorney general, 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 says. when requested to deliver an address -- he's telling us what lincoln told him. when requested to deliver an address on the occasion of the dedication of the national cemetery of gettysburg, he was very uncertain whether his duties would detain him at washington, but he was anxious to gene 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 said 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 a 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. 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 the outline of his boorks as he says. he's got en this story and he thinks it has a beginning, a middle and an end. that he uses it as kind of an yut v outline. but i don't think he takes in to account the fact there are these difficulties. it is a great piece of testimony, but testimony always has problems. i'm not going to in to that but to recommend the book if you are interested in the history. but here's the question -- here's the real controversy and it isn't just such an energy skbretic controversy as the textural controversy sometimes bx becomes. that is what is the bettysburg address? what is lincoln trying to say? what's the most important message for americans then when a what is its most enduring message. consider the setting in 1863. johnson's book is very good on this. but gabor -- gabor's book is even better. that is the setting the scene. after the battle. the army's leave. of course the confederate wounded are all left behind that they couldn't take. so -- and the union army can only take so many. so the people of gettysburg are left to tend the wound. the dead are simply lying on the ground by the thousands and the horse horses. and of course all the broken and abandoned implements of war strewn the battlefield. and for a while it was really bad. it was dangerously bad. they had to get those bodies buried. so it was not a pretty scene. by the time, four months later, when they had the ceremony, they were -- they had gotten on top of the burial to a large extent. but consider that the people there were -- there were lots of soldiers, okay, just on their own time. soldiers on leave. veterans of the battle, if they could get away came. there were a lot of them. relatives, widows, orphans of the people who are dead. it was a very somber occasion. in is something when we're looking at it on the page is hard to con texturalize. but it was the kind of occasion where 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 effect two-hour oration. the president was seemed to be mopping his tears. and then when lincoln read -- 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 i like to point to the comment of george william curtis in harpers. two weeks after the address, he says, it's the kind of thing 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 to forth, it was for a long time. that's what it was. it was about the soldiers who died at the battlefield. the other -- the other theme is the preservation of the union of course. president lincoln is saying the war is about the preservation of the public, the prezzer is ration of the union. this is what he said to greeley who is criticized for not moving quicker on slavery. it depends on what will preserve the union and that's what i'm going to do. if i have to free them all, or if i have to free some and not others it is what he made up his mind to do. the preservation of the union what been a national issue, strong national issue, growing national issue. got fierce in the 50s. but it went back to the webster-hang debate in 1830 a debate that lincoln would have memorized and his contemporariries and that would have been something like their gettysburg address. and at the level of the public's understanding, i think in so far 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 the point of the war was to end slavery but this is what lincoln is talking about, a new birth of freedom. certainly he invites that terpation. the demise of slave riff was foreshadowed vp. gettysburg was looked upon as a turning point. it wasn't clear yet that they were going to prevail, but this was the center of the hope. 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 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 reinterpretation of the declaration of independence and gary wells' book gives voice to this. the words that remade america. gary wells, you looel eel remember wrote a great book about jeffer snon the '70s and one point he made strongly was that it is silly for people to think -- i'm making that too strong, but that people thought they didn't think about all men are created equal so much jefferson's 18th century of rights but what lincoln says about people in general. and that lincoln -- this isn't what the declaration said. i think that people agreed with that except that i think what wells is saying in this second book is so he reinterpreted. 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 -- i certainly subscribe to that. i'm of a mind that lincoln -- that lincoln thought longest and hardest about his first sentence because i think he was trying to write a sentence that even his democratic opponents, who hated the war and who hated him and what he was trying to do and they had started a partisan war a republican war, dragged the country in to this kind of mess, this he had them in a kind of strap is a strang 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 at 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 nation -- right there the chicago times than democrats are going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute. we don't go along with. that it is too late. you have already gone along with the first premise and that's the one that matters. at any rate, that's the way i have 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 what he says in the first inaugural, about self government, which is only an experiment. democracies haven't worked because 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. we always think of lincoln as a warm, personable friendly guy. we always think of lincoln in abstract terms, i think self-government, that is what he is talking about, his speech ends by saying -- that's why this speech ends by saying that these -- these men shall not have died in vain, that this country under god shall have a new freedom that government by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth. lincoln knew how to use the negative. if you want to really make that ending strong, you don't say and that 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 top 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 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, 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 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 was 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 a good evidence once we look 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 these out and 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 that 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, n you -- nikolay says the same thing. that he was always writing, maybe just word or a phrase. something on a scrap of paper. and slate, mr. slate, 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 just am i 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 presidential he used a drawer, a certain drawer of his desk to put it in. he once described to somebody, he said i really like that public letter you wrote to corning. he said when it came time to write it i had it all right here. the idea of -- this is one place where i disagree with martin johnson. he says this speech, he didn't -- 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 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 him because they want the know how the people will 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 them 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 that after he delivered the 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 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 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 larger thing that we're doing here because it involves the whole world. it isn't just this country. but it's the whole future and the whole -- of the whole of the world. so 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 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 is hang those people down south 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 remember or 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 earth. 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 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 tea in the united states? >> the capitalization of -- >> the "t." >> 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 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. >> i got into taft, knowing he had been friends,

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