Today is the 146^th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I was reminded of this date yesterday when I took some visitors from Australia and New Zealand to visit the Lincoln Cottage in Northwest Washington. President Lincoln spent almost a quarter of his four-year term at this rural getaway. He and his family spent summers and early fall days there in 1862, 1863, and 1864. It was at this refuge—a retirement home for old and disabled soldiers–that he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation during that fateful summer of 1862.

Lincoln was not the featured speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery that cold November day in 1863. That honor had been reserved to Harvard’s former president, Edward Everett. Everett was regarded as the greatest orator of that age of great oratory.

Everett, a former Secretary of State, and former ambassador to England, was certainly a distinguished speaker. His resume looked a lot more impressive than prairie lawyer Lincoln’s did.

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