The Other Gettysburg Address

Dr. Fred Stripp is a faculty member of the Department of Speech, University of California, and also interim pastor of the South Berkeley Community Church. He has published articles in Social Forces, Crisis and Historical Magazine, but is quick to acknowledge the Civil War as his first love. The Other Gettysburg Address FRED STRIPP suppose you had lived in the United States of America from 1794 to 1865 and that Daniel Webster had likened his half-century of friendship with you to "a long streak of clear, blue, cerulean sky, without cloud, or mist, or haze." Suppose further that Ralph Waldo Emerson had paid tribute to your "radiant beauty of person," your "rich tones . . . precise and perfect utterance . . . the most mellow and beautiful and correct of all the instruments of the time." What if John Adams had written on your behalf a letter of introduction to Thomas Jefferson describing you as "the first literary character" of your age. What if John Quincy Adams had confided to his diary that your orations were "among the best ever delivered in this country" and would "stand the test of time." Imagine that Oliver Wendell Holmes had written a poem in honor of your inauguration as President of Harvard College. Assume that you had been well known to Presidents Adams, Jefferson, Madison, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, and Lincoln . Then picture yourself passing the time of day with Goethe, Byron, Macaulay, and Scott. Think of yourself as Congressman, Senator, and Governor of Massachusetts, Tyler's Ambassador to England, and Fillmore 's Secretary of State. Listen to such speakers as Daniel Webster and Wendell Phillips praise you as "the golden mouthed orator." Yet in just ninety years suppose all these others were remembered and you forgotten. And, the final straw, what if references to you were confined chiefly to contrasting unfavorably your two hour speech at Gettysburg with Lincoln's two minute masterpiece! You might have cause to ask the Muse of History for another hearing. Let it begin at Gettysburg. As the afternoon of November 19, 1863 merged with the eventide, fifteen thousand Americans departed the battlefield. They had dedicated seventeen acres of land as a final resting place for their soldier dead. Had they been asked to name the man 161 162FRED STRIPP who delivered the Gettysburg Address, their answer would have been unanimous: Edward Everett. Were we to poll fifteen thousand of their descendants on the same question today, with equal unanimity the honor would fall to Abraham Lincoln. Yet the President had been invited to speak as an afterthought. The committee on arrangements had debated his ability to deliver an address equal to the solemnity of the occasion. It was not decided until two weeks before the ceremony that he should be invited to make the official dedication with "a few appropriate remarks." Everett, on the other hand, was the unopposed choice of the seventeen State Governors consulted by the committee. So vital was his acceptance that he set the date! Invited on September 23rd to speak on October 23rd, he requested more time to prepare an oration for an occasion so memorable. Governor Curtin accepted the Everett date, November 19th, for the ceremonial of consecration. Edward Everett, a name to remember! In boyhood he was precocity itself. At 13, valedictorian from Exeter Academy, his original address was in Latin. At 17 it was the valedictory at Harvard, the youngest graduate, the highest honors. At 19 he held a post most clergymen would count their ultimate success, the largest, most fashionable, most critical and exacting parish in Boston, Brattle Square Church. While addressing overflow crowds with ninety minute sermons twice each Sunday — earning the nickname, "Ever-at-it" — Harvard College invited him to a full Professorship in Greek before his twenty-first birthday! He accepted but prefaced the teaching with four years of study and travel in Europe, becoming the first American to win a Ph.D. at Gottingen . He commented that his lecture notebooks would be of little use to anyone else, since he "wrote in English, German, French, or Latin as the whim seized him, often changing in the same sentence from one to...