"Four score and seven years ago . . . . "
Are any six words better known, of greater import, or from a more
crucial moment in our nation's history? And yet after 150 years the
dramatic and surprising story of how Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg
Address has never been fully told. Until now.
Martin Johnson's remarkable work of historical and literary
detection illuminates a speech, a man, and a moment in history that
we thought we knew. Johnson guides readers on Lincoln's emotional
and intellectual journey to the speaker's platform, revealing that
Lincoln himself experienced writing the Gettysburg Address as an
eventful process that was filled with the possibility of failure,
but which he knew resulted finally in success beyond
expectation.
We listen as Lincoln talks with the cemetery designer about the
ideals and aspirations behind the unprecedented cemetery project,
look over Lincoln's shoulder as he rethinks and rewrites his speech
on the very morning of the ceremony, and share his anxiety that he
might not live up to the occasion. And then, at last, we stand with
Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he created the words and image of an
enduring and authentic legend.
"Writing the Gettysburg Address" resolves the puzzles and
problems that have shrouded the composition of Lincoln's most
admired speech in mystery for fifteen decades. Johnson shows when
Lincoln first started his speech, reveals the state of the document
Lincoln brought to Gettysburg, traces the origin of the false story
that Lincoln wrote his speech on the train, identifies the
manuscript Lincoln held while speaking, and presents a new method
for deciding what Lincoln's audience actually heard him say.
Ultimately, Johnson shows that the Gettysburg Address was a
speech that grew and changed with each step of Lincoln's eventful
journey to the podium. His two-minute speech made the battlefield
and the cemetery into landmarks of the American imagination, but it
was Lincoln's own journey to Gettysburg that made the Gettysburg
Address.
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