Abraham Lincoln biography (continues...)

He had started writing his speech at home in Washington but he was still scribbling away at it when his train rattled into Pennsylvania that morning. Now, he was afraid his speech would be an anti-climax after the long oratory of Everett

He began, his high, twangy voice reaching out to the crowd, his eyes sometimes leaving his paper to make contact with his audience. But the attention of his audience wandered. Few absorbed what he said and when he finished - only two and a half minutes later - there was only a smattering of applause. Lincoln was distressed. "I ought to have prepared it with more care," he said later.

When he returned to the White House, the President felt ill and feverish. He had been tired now for a long time - a very long time. His friends had advised him to get some rest but his response had been: "The part that is tired is inside, out of reach." Now his doctor diagnosed a mild case of small pox and sent him to bed. In that bed the next morning, he read the newspaper accounts of his speech. Most said it was unremarkable, even trivial.

It would be a while before the speech at Gettysburg would be recognized as the masterpiece it is - one of the simplest, most beautiful summaries of the higher purpose of the war and of America itself. The last lines of the Gettysburg Address are familiar to almost every person in America:

"...We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

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