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…