Word: gettysburg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...MEADE to Gettysburg...
PERIL He won the great Union victory at Gettysburg and turned the tide of the war, but let Lee's battered army escape to Virginia, where it would fight again...
...diction and straightforward expression were at odds with the public's expectations. The recognized standard for a statesmanlike address in mid--19th century America called for considerably more formality and pretension. The prose of acknowledged masters of that kind of writing--such as Lincoln's fellow orator at Gettysburg, Edward Everett, or Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner--generally featured elevated diction, self-consciously artful expression and a certain moral unction. Lincoln's insistence on direct and forthright language, by contrast, seemed "odd" or "peculiar," as in this passage from a public letter he sent to Horace Greeley, founder and editor...
...Everett, who had been a president of Harvard, a Congressman, a Senator and a Governor of Massachusetts as well as a Secretary of State and a minister to England, was chosen to deliver the principal address at the dedication of the new national cemetery on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Lincoln was invited almost as an afterthought. One man spoke for two hours, the other for two minutes. One speech was printed and distributed in advance and has rarely been read since. The other is one of the most famous compositions in the American language...
...until he had cooled down, at which point he no longer needed to send it. Lincoln had rarely been more "dejected and discouraged," as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles observed, than when he learned that General George Meade had allowed Robert E. Lee's army to escape after Gettysburg. In a frank letter to Meade, Lincoln acknowledged that he was "distressed immeasureably" by "the magnitude of the misfortune ... He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will...