Gettysburg words echo across three centuries

LYNN – It took about two minutes to deliver and was received with scattered applause, but the Gettysburg Address endures across 150 years, according to local Civil War researchers, because of the desperate appeal Abraham Lincoln packed into its 250 words.?He was saying, ?This is our best shot at keeping the democracy together.? We can?t let this go,” said Larry Campbell.The short speech Lincoln delivered on Nov. 19, 1863 takes it name from the small Pennsylvania college town of Gettysburg where Union and Confederate soldiers fought and died slightly more than four months before Lincoln spoke.Lincoln delivered the address that day on the heels of Edward Everett – a former U.S. senator who Campbell described as a grand orator of the mid-19th century. Everett spoke for two hours, and – according to Campbell – praised Lincoln after hearing the president?s brief speech.?He told him, ?You said more in two minutes than I did in two hours,?” Campbell said.Campbell, a Winthrop resident and volunteer at the Grand Army of the Republic Building on Andrew Street, said Lincoln went to Gettysburg understanding the Union Army had won a critical victory there in July 1863 but also knowing many bloody battles still loomed ahead before the North defeated the Confederacy.His first words in the address immediately connect the listener or reader to the nation?s birth.?He was trying to solidify the country at a time when there was no guarantee the war would be won,” Campbell said.Grand Army curator Robert Matthias said Lincoln understood the importance of the Gettysburg victory for the Union and sought through his speech to send a message to other nations to not meddle in American affairs.?It was a way of telling the world: ?Don?t entertain the idea of supporting the South,?” Matthias said.Lynn soldiers were stationed in Union Army forts around Washington, D.C. and probably were on hand for Lincoln?s address, said Campbell and Matthias.Campbell said most Americans read about the address in newspapers, but he said decades passed before Lincoln?s remarks on that November day reached the significance and stature they enjoy today.Minutes from hundreds of meetings Union veterans held in the Grand Army hall between 1867 and 1920 make no mention of the Gettysburg speech. Campbell said that for some Lynn veterans, memories of late 1863 revolved around the bloody battle in Pennsylvania that repulsed Robert E. Lee?s army and the New York City draft riots soldiers were called in to quell.Campbell on Monday sported a T-shirt depicting Lincoln wearing sunglasses and balancing one foot on a skateboard – a tribute, he said, to the 16th president?s reported willingness to try anything to drum up popular support for one of his causes.He said historians note how Lincoln often assembled speeches from snatches of conversations he overheard or snippets of writing that appealed to him. His writing and speech-making skills allowed him to assemble enduring addresses from scraps of paper stuffed into a desk drawer.On Nov. 19, 1863, Matthias said Lincoln managed to craft a speech that matched the significance of the battle fought on the fields and hills around the cemetery.?I think it was the crossroads of the country,” he said.