Writing the Gettysburg Address
Writing the Gettysburg Address by Martin P. Johnson, published by University Press of Kansas in 2013, is a detailed exploration of one of the most significant speeches in American history. This first edition, comprising 322 pages, delves into the intricate process through which Abraham Lincoln crafted the Gettysburg Address, revealing the emotional and intellectual challenges he faced leading up to the moment he delivered it. Johnson’s work sheds light on the historical context and the pivotal role this speech played during the Civil War period.
Readers will find an in-depth analysis of Lincoln’s journey, including his interactions with the cemetery designer and his last-minute revisions on the day of the ceremony. The book addresses long-standing mysteries surrounding the speech’s composition, such as the origins of the myth that Lincoln wrote it on a train and the actual manuscript he used during the address. By examining the speech’s evolution, Johnson highlights how Lincoln’s experiences transformed the Gettysburg Address into a defining moment in American rhetoric and history.
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Winner: Lincoln Prize
Four score and seven years ago . . . .
Are any six words better known, of greater import, or from a more crucial moment in our nation’:s history? And yet after 150 years the dramatic and surprising story of how Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address has never been fully told. Until now.
Martin Johnson’s remarkable work of historical and literary detection illuminates a speech, a man, and a moment in history that we thought we knew. Johnson guides readers on Lincoln’s emotional and intellectual journey to the speaker’s platform, revealing that Lincoln himself experienced writing the Gettysburg Address as an eventful process that was filled with the possibility of failure, but which he knew resulted finally in success beyond expectation.
We listen as Lincoln talks with the cemetery designer about the ideals and aspirations behind the unprecedented cemetery project, look over Lincoln’s shoulder as he rethinks and rewrites his speech on the very morning of the ceremony, and share his anxiety that he might not live up to the occasion. And then, at last, we stand with Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he created the words and image of an enduring and authentic legend.
Writing the Gettysburg Address resolves the puzzles and problems that have shrouded the composition of Lincoln’s most admired speech in mystery for fifteen decades. Johnson shows when Lincoln first started his speech, reveals the state of the document Lincoln brought to Gettysburg, traces the origin of the false story that Lincoln wrote his speech on the train, identifies the manuscript Lincoln held while speaking, and presents a new method for deciding what Lincoln’s audience actually heard him say.
Ultimately, Johnson shows that the Gettysburg Address was a speech that grew and changed with each step of Lincoln’s eventful journey to the podium. His two-minute speech made the battlefield and the cemetery into landmarks of the American imagination, but it was Lincoln’s own journey to Gettysburg that made the Gettysburg Address.
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