Lincoln Museum To Display Gettysburg Address This Summer

By Chuck Sudo in News on May 30, 2012 9:00PM

The Gettysburg Address is regarded as one of the most well-known and important speeches in American history: a short speech—it was a little more than two minutes long—that Abraham Lincoln used to redefine the Civil War as "a new birth of freedom" that ensured democracy would be a viable form of government and that the deaths of Union soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg were not simply for preserving the Union. The Gettysburg Address also led generations of schoolkids to ask, "Why didn't Lincoln just say '87 years ago' instead of 'four score and seven years ago?'"

This summer a manuscript of The Great Emancipator's speech will go on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. The copy going on display beginning June 1, known as the "Everett copy," is one of five handwritten manuscripts of the speech, is the third one bearing Lincoln's autograph, and contains the words "under God," which wasn't in Lincoln's first two drafts. Lincoln sent the copy to former Massachusetts Governor and Secretary of State Edward Everett, at Everett's request, in 1864. Everett was working on a collection of the speeches at the Gettysburg dedication to sell for the benefit of injured soldiers.

Illinois obtained the manuscript in 1944, after schoolchildren across the state collected pennies. Marshall Field III (of the department store many of us still call by that name) also donated money to the effort.

The Everett copy of the Gettysburg Address will be on display as part of the Lincoln Library and Museum's "Treasures Gallery" through Sept. 4.