Thaindian News

New York, Nov 19 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Today marks 147 years since America’s charismatic president, Abraham Lincoln gave the powerful speech at Gettysburg. The speech is one of the most famous in the history of the world. And ironically it would not have happened if there have been enough grave diggers around that time.

Well that was not the only problem that nearly made the Gettysburg Address no show. A day before he was due to be in Gettysburg, Lincoln’s wife pleaded with him to abort the trip because their son, Tad was sick. His wife held Lincoln’s knees and famously said “You can’t go. Tad will die if you do”. Mary, Lincoln’s wife had seen such death before and didn’t want to risk the couple’s youngest son. The couple had earlier lost two children, Willie and Edward.

That plea though did not stop Lincoln and he made the four-hour journey to Gettysburg. Lincoln gave his speech the following day and his speech followed the speech of Edward Everett who was a distinguished statesman then.

Throughout the speech, Lincoln failed to look at the speech that he has prepared and ended up adding to the speech. When Lincoln finished his speech in two minutes, the crowd of about 10,000 people stayed silent but Everett told him that “Mr. President, you achieved in two minutes what I tried to do in two hours”.