Gettysburg to be exhibit subject

An exhibit covering aspects of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is scheduled to open Wednesday, Nov. 19, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield.

The date coincides with the occasion on Nov. 19, 1863, when the president spoke at the dedication of a National Soldiers’ Cemetery on a portion of the battlefield where at least 7,000 soldiers die and 44,000 more were wounded.

Although the Gettysburg Address is considered among the most significant speeches ever made by Lincoln, or any other president, it was not held in such high esteem for several years.

That oversight is attributable to the widely heralded Thanksgiving Day Proclamation that Lincoln had made on Oct. 3, 1863 – less than seven weeks before the Gettysburg dedication.

Almost prefatory to his Gettysburg oration, the Thanksgiving proclamation called on the nation to commend to God’s “tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably detained…”

At Gettysburg, Lincoln focused on the casualties of war, asking “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…”