Gettysburg Home Hosted President Night Before Historic Address
When President Abraham Lincoln first arrived in Gettysburg, Pa., it was the day before he was to speak at the dedication of the National Soldiers Cemetery, and his comments hadn’t yet been completed. He needed a placed to stay the night and work. Gettysburg attorney David Wills owned the largest house on the downtown square and he had also been the person to invite the President to speak at the dedication. So in November 1863, it wasn’t surprising that he played host to Abraham Lincoln. Wills Role in the Gettysburg Address It was Wills who convinced the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to purchase 17 acres to become a cemetery for the soldiers killed in the Battle of Gettysburg that had occurred less than five months prior. He planned the cemetery dedication for November 19, 1863, with Edward Everett as the main Read more…
Female reporter on Gettysburg Address gets her recognition 78 later
Mary Shaw Leader of Hanover got up early on November 19, 1863, and started off on her walk to work. Hours later, after a cold 15-mile walk, she arrived in Gettysburg to attend the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Since the Battle of Gettysburg in July, the cemetery had been laid out and the remains of the soldiers killed in the battle had been reinterred. She, along with hundreds of other people, stood through U.S. statesman Edward Everett’s two-hour-long speech and President Abraham Lincoln’s less-than-three-minute speech. Eyewitness accounts of Lincoln’s speech, which would become known as “The Gettysburg Address”, have said that initial reaction to it was mixed. Historian Shelby Foote has said that applause was “barely polite.” Sarah Cooke Myers, who attended the speech, recalled in 1931, “There was no applause when he stopped speaking.” However, the New Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1945: Lincoln's chair reappears
Last week, I wrote about how the chair that Abraham Lincoln may have used using the Gettysburg Address ceremony disappeared from Gettysburg College. This week, the rest of the story…. For years, Gettysburg College had displayed a rocking chair believed to have been the one Abraham Lincoln used as he sat on the platform during the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery where he delivered his Gettysburg Address. At some point in the 1920’s, it disappeared from the collection. No one knew who had taken it or how and no big deal was made of its loss. Then on April 7, 1945, the Gettysburg Times reported, “The little old rocking chair that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have used on the platform in the National cemetery November 19, 1863, when he delivered his deathless Gettysburg Address, has come back to the Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1920's: Lincoln's chair vanishes
On November 19, 1863, thousands of people gathered in Gettysburg for the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery. The keynote speaker of the event was Edward Everett. As his speech continued on and on, people standing in the crowd had to sit or risk their legs buckling. On the stage, the speakers had chairs to rest on until their time to speak came. President Abraham Lincoln sat in a rocking chair between Everett and Secretary of State William Seward. “Mr. Lincoln sat on the platform all the time in a rude, little stiff-backed chair, hard, and uncomfortable, but he hardly ever moved,” Dr. Henry Jacobs recalled in the Gettysburg Times in 1923. He had been a young boy in the audience at the dedication. When Everett had finished his two-hour speech, the president stood up from his rocker, walked to the Read more…
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