The speech famously begins with "Four score and seven years ago", referring to the American Revolution in 1776. "Score" in this case is an old word meaning "twenty." Lincoln used the ceremony at Gettysburg to encourage the people to help America's democracy, so that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".
The speech is very important in the popular culture of the United States. However, people are not sure about the exact words of the speech. The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address are different from one another in some details. They are also different from the words of the Gettysburg Address that have been printed in modern newspapers.
About 172,000 American soldiers fought in the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1–3, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg was an important influence on the American Civil War and on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where only 2,400 people lived. The battlefield had more than 7,500 bodies of dead soldiers and 5,000 horses. Sarah Broadhead, a wife and mother living in the town, feared that they would "be visited with pestilence". Eliza Farnham, a nurse, called the place "one vast hospital". An army medical officer spoke similarly: " days following the battle of Gettysburg greatest amount of human suffering known in this nation since its birth".
The people of Gettysburg wanted to bury the dead properly. At first, they planned to buy land for a cemetery and ask the families of the dead to pay for the burial. However, David Willis, a rich 32-year-old lawyer, did not like this idea. He wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gregg Curtin, asking that a National Cemetery be supported by the states. Wills was allowed to buy 17 acres (69,000 m²) for a cemetery to honor the people who died in the battle. He paid $2,475.87 for the land.
At first, Wills wanted to dedicate this new cemetery on Wednesday, October 23. He asked Edward Everett to be the main speaker. Everett was a very famous orator at that time. He had also served as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard University, and Vice Presidential candidate. However, Everett replied that he would not be able to prepare a good speech so quickly, and wanted to move the date of the dedication. The organizing committee agreed, and the dedication was moved to Thursday, November 19.
Wills and the event committee then asked President Lincoln to join in the ceremony. Wills' letter said, "It is the desire , as Chief Executive of the nation, formally (officially) set apart these a few appropriate (proper) remarks". Lincoln was officially asked to join only 17 days before the ceremony, while Everett had received his invitation 40 days earlier. "Although there is some evidence Lincoln expected Wills's letter, its late date makes the author (writer) appear days was extraordinarily (remarkably) short notice for presidential participation even by nineteenth-century standards". Also, Wills's letter "made it equally clear to the president that he would have only a small part in the ceremonies".
Lincoln came by train to Gettysburg on November 18. He spent the night in Wills's house on the Gettysburg town square. There, he finished the speech he had written in Washington, D.C. There is a popular story that Lincoln completed his address on the train on the back of an envelope, but it is not true. There are several early copies on Executive Mansion paper, and reports of Lincoln finishing his speech while he was a guest of David Wills at Gettysburg. On the morning of November 19 at 9:30 a.m., Lincoln, riding a brown horse, joined the townspeople, and widows marching out to the grounds to be dedicated.
About 15,000 people went to the ceremony. This included the governors of six of the 24 Union states. They were Andrew Gregg Curtin of Pennsylvania, Augustus Bradford of Maryland, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Horatio Seymour of New York, Joel Parker of New Jersey, and David Tod of Ohio. Canadian politician William McDougall came as Lincoln's guest. Historians do not agree about the exact place where the dedication ceremony was held inside the cemetery. Moving all the bodies to the graves in the cemetery was less than half complete on the day of the ceremony.
By August 1863, millions of people had been killed or injured because of Civil War battles. This made people in the North begin to dislike Lincoln and the war. Lincoln's 1863 drafts were not popular, and people became angriest with them around the time of the New York Draft Riots. This was just ten days after the Battle of Gettysburg. In September 1863, Pennsylvania's Governor Curtin told Lincoln that people were turning against the war effort:
If the election were to occur now, the result would be extremely doubtful (not sure), and although most of our discreet friends are sanguine of the result, my impression is, the chances would be against us. The draft is very odious in the State... the Democratic leaders have succeeded in exciting prejudice and passion, and have infused their poison into the minds of the people to a very large extent, and the changes are against us.
In the summer of 1864, Lincoln was worried that the people's bad feelings would make him lose the Presidential election. In the fall of 1863, he grew very concerned about keeping up the Union's spirits toward the war effort. That was the greatest purpose of Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg.
The program organized for that day by Wills and his committee included:
Lincoln's short speech became known in history as one of the best examples of English public speeches. Everett's two-hour oration was called the "Gettysburg address" that day, but his oration is not well-known today. It began:
It ended two hours later with:
After Everett finished his speech, Lincoln spoke for two or three minutes. Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" summarized the war in ten sentences.
Lincoln's speech is very important in history, but modern scholars do not agree about the words of the speech. There are many different modern versions printed in newspaper accounts of the event. Among these, the Bliss version, written some time after the speech for a friend, is seen by lots of people as the most reliable text. Its text is different, however, from the written versions prepared by Lincoln before and after his speech. It is the only version Lincoln put his signature on. It is also the last he is known to have written.
In "Lincoln at Gettysburg", Garry Wills notes the similarity between Lincoln's speech and Pericles's Funeral Oration during the Peloponnesian War (James McPherson and Gore Vidal also note this). Pericles' speech begins with remembering honored people: "I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion like the present". This is very much like the Gettysburg Address's famous beginning. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln had begun by speaking of how "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation". He then praises their State's firm democracy: "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all". He honors the dead's sacrifice: "Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face". He also warmly encourages the living to continue to fight for true democracy: "You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue".