Mr. Lincoln came out of his office. He had on his tall hat. It made him look taller. All three of us went down the stairs. As we started to leave the White House, Mr. Lincoln remembered he had forgotten something and hurried back up the stairs to his office. He soon rejoined us with an envelope in his hand . We walked out of the White House and Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Brooks headed for a carriage with two horses. I hung back, looking around for the President’s limousine. It instantly dawned on me again, no cars! We were really going to ride in a horse drawn carriage! Mr. Lincoln ducked his head way down to get into the carriage because of his hat. Miss Adolph said that Mr. Lincoln put important papers in the lining of his hat. The carriage started off to the photographer’s studio. I felt like I was in an old movie, riding in a new, antique, looking carriage drawn by horses. We rode on the circular drive past an old, moldy, bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson that was in the front yard of the White House. The statute was not there last year when I visited. There were no secret service people positioned on the grounds like last summer either. We went thru two, large, open gates that were attached to a tall metal fence and then came to the main road. I mumbled to myself in disbelief, ‘no cars’. I just couldn’t grasp that fact. The buildings that lined the avenues, the gas street lights and everything looked just like we were really on an old fashioned movie set; no telephone or electric poles or traffic lights. The carriage was being pulled thru puddles of liquid mud and it jostled all over the place. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Lincoln didn’t seem to think anything about the mess in the streets. As we were riding along, Mr. Lincoln casually said, “In this envelope is an advance copy of the address Edward Everett is planning to deliver at the Gettysburg Battlefield Dedication on the 19th of November.” He paused and added, “It was thoughtful of Mr. Everett to send a copy of his speech to me so that I would not give the same message that he was planning to deliver. You know Mr. Everett really doesn’t have to worry. What I have to say is very short and is written but not finished. I brought his speech along in hopes that at the studio, I would have a few minutes to look it over.” Mr. Brooks and Mr. Lincoln continued talking. Bam, it hit me like a ton of bricks! Wow! Mr. Lincoln was talking about the Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous speeches ever written. My mind was exploding. I couldn’t get over it. The Gettysburg Address wasn’t finished…wasn’t even written yet. President Lincoln hadn’t gone to Gettysburg and the Address hadn’t even been given. My brain couldn’t handle this. It was short circuiting. I began franticly trying to remember what I knew about the Gettysburg Address. Wow, I thought, I could give him the speech! I knew it by heart! Miss Adolph made us memorize it in school. Besides making us memorize the Gettysburg Address, Miss Adolph told us the following story about what happened during the Gettysburg Battlefield Dedication Ceremony. She said in Pennsylvania there was a group of men, a Commission that was in charge of arranging a dedication of a National Soldier’s Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA. The Battle of Gettysburg was significant because of the loss of so many lives on both sides… like 50,000 men and lots of horses etc. Some say the battle was a turning point of the war. On Sept. 23, 1863, the Commission sent a letter asking the most famous speaker of the day, a Mr. Edward Everett, to give the main speech at the dedication ceremony. Mr. Lincoln had previously been sent an invitation to attend the ceremony and he let the Commission know that he was planning to attend. Since he was coming to the ceremony, the Commission, as an afterthought, sent Mr. Lincoln a letter on Nov. 2, asking him to formally set apart the grounds to their sacred use by a ‘few appropriate remarks’. Therefore, Mr. Lincoln had very little time to prepare his speech. I was thinking to myself, ‘If this is Nov.8th, he only has 11 days to finish the Gettysburg Address’. Mr. Lincoln boarded the train to Gettysburg on Nov 18th. At sundown that evening, the train pulled into Gettysburg. At about 11 o’clock that evening he gathered his papers together and went over to meet with Mr. Seward (his Sec. of State) for a half hour to review his remarks. The next morning Mr. Lincoln rode to the Gettysburg graveyard on horseback. Mr. Everett spoke for nearly two hours. He had memorized his speech. Can you believe someone memorizing something that lasted two hours? It is said, that when Mr. Lincoln gave his address, he held two pieces of handwritten paper at which he occasionally glanced, and he delivered his famous address in a sharp, unmusical, treble voice. His ten sentences were spoken in less than three minutes. Right after Mr. Lincoln gave the address he said to Col. Lamon that ‘He didn’t think his speech was any good. It fell on the audience like a wet blanket. I ought to have spent more time on it’’
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