Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1894 — LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG. [ARTICLE]

LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG.

His Wonderful Speech and the Maimer oi its Delivery, John G. Nicolay, who was Mr, Lincoln’s private' secretary, and who accompanied the President when he madehis immortal speech at Gettysburg, contributes an article to the February Century, describing the occasion and comparing the various versions of the speech. He thus describes its delivery: At about eleven o’clock the Presidential party reached the platform. Mr, Everett, the orator of the day, arrived fully half an hour later, and there was still further waiting before the military bodies and civic spectators could be properly ranged and stationed. It was therefore folly noon before Mr. Everett began his address, after which/for two hours, he held the assembled multitude in rapt attention with his eloquent description and argument, his polished diction, his carefully studied and -practiced delivery.

When he had concluded, and the band had performed the usual musical interlude. President Lincoln rose to fill the part assigned him in the program. It was entirely natural for every one to expect that this would consist of a few perfunctory words, the mere formality of official dedication. There is every probability that the assemblage regarded Mr. Everett as the mouthpiece, the organ of expression of the thought and feeling of the hour, and took it for granted tha t Mr. Lincoln was there as a mere official figure-head, the culminating decoration, so to speak, of the elaborately planned pageant of the day. They were therefore totally unprepared far-what they heard, and could not immediately realize that his words, and not those of the carefully selected orator, were to carry concentrated thought of the occasion like a trumpet-peal to farthest posterity. The newspaper records indicate that when Mr. Lincoln began to speak, he held in his hand the manuscript first draft of his address which he had finished only a short time before. Blit it is the distinct recollection of the v/riter. who sat within a few feet of him, that he did not read from the written pages, though that impression was naturally left upon many of his auditors. That it was not a mere mechanical reading is. however, more definitely confirmed by the circumstance that Mr. Lincoln did not deliver the address in the exact form in which his first draft is written. It was taken down in shorthand by the reporter for the “Associated Press,” telegraphed totbaqjrnrcTpal cities, and printed on the following morning in the leading newspapers.