All roads lead to Gettysburg. It was as true in 1863 as it is today. Robert E. Lee saw it, the Union Army saw it and four months after the armies left this place, Abraham Lincoln saw it, too. Tragedy, grace, bravery and eloquence draw me back to that sleepy little crossroads town. When viewed in the panoply of American history, by any measure, Gettysburg is America’s most hallowed ground and much of what it means to be an American can be discovered there.
Although I am repeatedly drawn back to those broad fields and rolling hills, I am never quite sure why I feel an almost spiritual attachment to the place. Was it the bloody battle that was fought there or the rather spare 272 words spoken there that brings me back? One reason for that spiritual attachment is obvious. Fierce fighting occurred at Gettysburg for three days in July 1863, when 94,000 men of the Union Army of the Potomac collided with 70,000 men of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, resulting in more than 51,000 casualties. The soldiers who died there gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, the “last full measure of devotion” as Lincoln aptly called it, and it is difficult not to see that act of sacrifice as something precious, something holy, something grandly divine.
Gettysburg, although undeniably the turning point of the Civil War, might well have been viewed as just another battle had it not been consecrated as sacred ground by Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In 1863, Gettysburg had blossomed into a town of 2,500 inhabitants with ten roads leading to a town supporting a few small but thriving industries. At the time of battle, there were about 450 buildings housing carriage manufacturing, shoemakers and tanneries as well as the usual merchants, banks and taverns expected from any county seat. Historians I have spoken to claim that today, one can easily see where that burgeoning manufacturing town came to a halt after the battle passed through. It quickly transformed into a battlefield supporting a tourist town. But that’s another story.
For my part, over the next few weeks, I’d like to focus on an event that happened 150 years ago this week. It was a speech that some initially felt fell flat. A speech that would, in time, sweep the country and transform a nation. On November 18, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln left the White House to board a train bound for Gettysburg. The President had been invited by local attorney David Wills to deliver a “few appropriate remarks” at the dedication of a cemetery for the soldiers killed there during the battle. Amazingly, this request, sent November 2, 1863 came to Lincoln a mere seventeen days prior to the dedication.
The letter reads:
Gettysburg Nov. 2nd, 1863 To His Excellency A. Lincoln, President of The United States, Sir, The Several States having Soldiers In the Army of the Potomac, who were killed at the battle of Gettysburg, or have since died at the various hospitals which were established in the vicinity, have procured grounds on a prominent part of the Battle Field for a Cemetery, and are having the dead removed to there and properly buried. These Grounds will be Consecrated and set apart to this sacred purpose, by appropriate Ceremonies on Thursday the 19th instant, – Hon Edward Everett will deliver the Oration. I am authorized by the Governors of the different States to invite you to be present, and participate in these ceremonies, which will doubtless be very imposing and solemnly impressive. It is the desire that, after the Oration, You, as Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their Sacred use by a few appropriate remarks. It will be a source of great gratification to the many widows and orphans that have been made almost friendless by the Great Battle here, to have you personally! and it will kindle anew in the breast of the comrades of these brave dead, who are now in the tented field or nobly meeting the foe in the front, a confidence that they who sleep in death on the Battle Field are not forgotten by those highest in authority; and they will feel that, should their fate be the same, their remains will not be uncared for. We hope you will be able to be present to perform this last solemn act to the Soldiers dead on the Battle Field. I am with great Respect, Your Excellency’s Obedient Servant, David Wills Agent for A.G. Curtin, Gov. of Penna. and acting for all the States.
Wills, a prosperous 32-year-old attorney, owned the largest house on the town square and had recently purchased 17 acres for a cemetery to honor the Union dead from the battle. He arranged for the cemetery dedication on November 19, 1863, with Edward Everett as the main speaker.
Although given only two weeks to do so, Lincoln thought deeply about what he wanted to say at Gettysburg. He almost never got the chance to say it. Shortly before the trip, Lincoln’s son, Tad, became ill with a high fever and rash. Abraham and Mary Lincoln were no strangers to juvenile illness: they had already lost two sons to typhoid fever. Mary Lincoln, always high tempered and prone to fits of hysteria, panicked when her husband prepared to leave. However, Lincoln felt the opportunity to speak at Gettysburg to present his defense of the war was too important to miss, so he kissed his sickly child and distraught wife on their foreheads and boarded a train bound for Pennsylvania.
Lincoln biographer William E. Barton wrote: “The railway authorities of the Baltimore and Ohio, who furnished the special four coach train, planned at first that the president should leave Washington early in the morning of the day of dedication, and return that night. Lincoln himself, with characteristic caution, informed the secretary of war that he did not like this arrangement. At Lincoln’s suggestion, Secretary Stanton procured a change of schedule. Instead of leaving Washington at six o’clock on Thursday morning, the presidential train left at noon on Wednesday, November eighteenth.”
Lincoln was understandably distracted, but despite his son’s illness, remained in good spirits during the journey. He was accompanied by an entourage that included Secretary of State William Seward, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, Interior Secretary John Usher, Lincoln’s personal secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay, several members of the diplomat corps, some foreign visitors, a Marine band, and a military escort. The president also brought along his valet William H Johnson, a free black man who had been with the Lincoln family ever since Springfield, Illinois.
One of those on board was a 21-year-old Marine Corps Lieutenant from Chester, Pennsylvania named Henry Clay Cochrane. He later gave a detailed account of Lincoln’s trip to Gettysburg. Cochrane’s meticulous diary gives us some insight into the kind of person Lincoln was and offers a glimpse into the president’s life at the most important moment in American history. Cochrane was assigned to the Marine Corps Band, but it appears soon after the presidential party boarded the train, he found himself sitting adjacent to the president.
“Accordingly, on the morning of the 18th of November, we proceeded to the old Baltimore & Ohio railroad depot, near the Capitol, and there found a special train of cars waiting to receive President Lincoln and his party. The locomotive was decorated with flags and streamers and presented a gala appearance. Secretary Seward, who was in charge of the party, began to get uneasy as we approached Baltimore, for it was the first time that Mr. Lincoln had been north of Washington since he had gone there in the night of February 22, 1861, two years and nine months previously. There was something of the same fear of attack or assassination which had prevailed upon that occasion, for Baltimore was still the home of many sympathizers with rebellion. Upon reaching the western edge of the city the locomotive was detached and the cars were dragged by tandem teams of horses to Calvert Street Station, where we took the Northern Central Railroad. In passing through the streets all was quiet, and at the station less than two hundred people were assembled, among them some women with children in arms. They called for the President and Mr. Seward came into the car, and he agreed to go out when the train was about ready to start. This he did and took two or three of the babies up and kissed them, which greatly pleased their mothers. They told stories for an hour or so, Mr. Lincoln taking his turn and enjoying it very much.” said Cochrane.
“During the ride to Gettysburg the President placed every one who approached him at his ease, relating numerous stories, some of them laughable, and others of a character that deeply touched the hearts of his listeners,” recalled Union Army officer E. W. Andrews. The President told the father of a young man who had died in the battle: “You have been called upon to make a terrible sacrifice for the Union, and a visit to that spot, I fear, will open your wounds afresh. But oh! My dear sir, if we had reached the end of such sacrifices, and had nothing left for us to do but to place garlands on the graves of those who have already fallen, we could give thanks even amidst our tears; but when I think of the sacrifices of life yet to be offered and the hearts and homes yet to be made desolate before this dreadful war, so wickedly forced upon us, is over, my heart is like lead within me, and I feel, at times, like hiding in deep darkness.”
“The last car was a kind of president’s or director’s car with about one-third of the rear partitioned off into a room with the seats around it, and in this room I found myself seated vis-a-vis to the President,” Cochrane wrote. “The rest of the car was furnished in the usual manner. I happened to have bought a New York Herald before leaving and, observing that Mr. Lincoln was without a paper, offered it to him. He took it and thanked me, saying ‘I like to see what they say about us,’ meaning himself and the generals in the field. The news that morning was not particularly exciting, being about Burnside at Knoxville, Sherman at Chattanooga, and Meade on the Rapidau, all, however, expecting trouble. He read for a little while and then began to laugh at some wild guesses of the paper about pending movements. He laughed very heartily and it was pleasant to see his sad face lighted up. He was looking very badly at that particular time, being sallow, sunken-eyed, thin, care-worn and very quiet.”
There was a good reason for Lincoln’s poor physical appearance. According to historians, Lincoln was suffering from the effects of variola major, a serious form of smallpox. Few Americans realize how close Lincoln came to not delivering that much revered speech, or that its brevity may have been a result of how poorly Lincoln was feeling at the time he wrote, and delivered, his address. On the train ride north, Lincoln told his staff that he was feeling weak, but resolved to finish editing his address before he arrived at Gettysburg.
Then, when approaching Hanover Junction, Lincoln arose and said : “‘Gentlemen, this is all very pleasant, but the people will expect me to say something to them tomorrow, and I must give the matter some thought,’” according to Cochrane. “He then returned to the rear room of the car. I mention this circumstance particularly because of the different versions given by his many biographers of the history of the preparation of his famous address delivered the next day. By some, you may remember, it is claimed that he wrote it on the train upon a piece of wrapping paper, by another upon a piece of paste-board, by another that it was written in Gettysburg on a yellow government envelope, by another that it was written in the house of David Wills, with writing materials which he asked to have sent to his room after retiring, and by others that it was done in Washington. My own belief is that the first nineteen lines were written in Washington and the remainder on the train and in Gettysburg. Lincoln said to Noah Brooks, one of his historians, before leaving Washington, ‘My speech is all blocked out. It is very short.’ The first sheet of the manuscript bore the heading ‘Executive Mansion,’ and those nineteen lines written upon it were never materially changed, the rest bore evidence of having been written and re-written many times, and was even changed in the delivery upon the platform.”
“At Hanover Junction, 46 miles from Baltimore, we were to meet a special train which left Harrisburg at 1.30 P.M., containing Governors Curtin of Pennsylvania, Seymour of New York, Tod of Ohio, Governor-elect Brough and Ex-Governor Dennison of Ohio, Governor Boreman and Ex-Governor Pierpont of West Virginia, Simon Cameron, Clement C. Barclay, Generals Doubleday, Stoneman and Stahl and others, but it was detained by an accident and we continued on to Gettysburg, where we arrived about sundown and were surprised to find some of the wounded of the battle still in hospital.” recalled Cochrane, ” The President became the guest of Mr. David Wills, Mr. Seward went to Mr. Harper’s, and General Fry, Colonel Burton, Captain Ramsay and I went to one of the hotels. Gettysburg was crowded and it was said that hundreds slept on the floors. That night the President, Mr. Seward and Colonel John W. Forney were serenaded by the 5th N. Y. Artillery Band, and a reception was held at Mr. Wills’. About 11 o’clock the train with the belated governors arrived. The party was soon joined by Governor Coburn of Maine, Governor Parker of New Jersey, Governor Bradford of Maryland, and Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana.”
The stage was now set for Abraham Lincoln to deliver the most famous speech in the history of the English language. A speech that most Americans can recite by heart. A speech that many historians believe can find it’s roots in the Bible, the Constitution and…the female body.
Next week: Part 2 — Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Indiana National Road” and “Haunted Irvington” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
