“Seeing” the Gettysburg Address
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The featured speaker at the event was the politician and orator Edward Everett, but the dedication organizers had asked Lincoln to make “a few appropriate remarks.” Everett spoke for two hours. Lincoln spoke for two minutes. Everett’s 13,607-word oration is largely forgotten. But the 271 words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address have come to be one of the most eloquent and important speeches in American history.
In the 155 years since Lincoln delivered his address, generations of Americans have sought to picture the event—to “see” the president deliver his famous address. There are no photographs of Lincoln on the speakers’ platform, so artists have tried to imagine and portray the scene. These are examples from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection.
Despite the statement in the upper left, the image on this postcard is not from an “original photograph of President Lincoln delivering his immortal address.” It is a reproduction of a watercolor by Joseph Boggs Beale (1841-1926). Beale shows Lincoln with arms spread, as though appealing to the crowd. The painting was one of a series of twelve Beale created and published in 1898 illustrating the life of Abraham Lincoln.
This hand-colored lithograph by A. I. Keller based on Beale’s painting was published by Harper’s Weekly in 1900. Publication in Harper’s would have given the image a large public audience.
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930) created this painting of a strangely uncertain Lincoln on the Gettysburg speakers’ platform. Lincoln’s address text lies forgotten on the stage at his feet, Secretary of State William Seward sits impassively on the left, and Everett appears to be leaving on the right. Ferris is best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history titled The Pageant of a Nation. He is not known for historical accuracy, which might explain why the women behind Lincoln are in summer attire, not appropriate for November in Pennsylvania.
In 1934, the Lincoln Life Insurance Company commissioned artist Leone Bracker (1885-1937) to create charcoal drawings of major events in Abraham Lincoln’s life to use in the company’s advertising campaigns. This drawing of Lincoln at Gettysburg was one of them. Bracker’s Lincoln speaks to the crowd of soldiers and civilians in front of him while ghostly images of the battle itself loom behind him.
Norman Rockwell’s (1894-1978) illustration shows Lincoln from the audience’s perspective. The president stands reading his speech from the small piece of paper in his hand. Everett is pictured seated behind Lincoln, holding a sizable roll of papers on which is written his own speech.
In his “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” Louis Bonhajo (1885-1970) also portrays Lincoln as his listeners would have seen him. The president looks down from the speakers’ platform, perhaps after speaking, holding the text of his speech at his side.
In 1974, Ohio artist and Lincoln collector Lloyd Ostendorf (1921-2000) created “Lincoln at Gettysburg.” As earlier artists had done, Ostendorf shows Lincoln from the listeners’ perspective as the president reads his remarks. Everett sits behind him on the right.
Despite artists’ best imaginative efforts, we do not know how the scene unfolded as Lincoln stood on the speakers’ platform and delivered his most famous address. The scene, however, will always be secondary to what Lincoln said that day.
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