Two noted statesmen spoke at the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery to pay tribute to the soldiers who had fallen in the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place during the American Civil War. United States President Abraham Lincoln delivered the brief but powerful Gettysburg Address. Before Lincoln spoke, Edward Everett, one of the best-known American orators of the day, addressed a gathering of about 15,000 people for a full two hours. The conclusion of Everett’s speech follows. American spelling has been retained.

“A New Bond of Union”

November 19, 1863

Now, friends, fellow citizens of Gettysburg and Pennsylvania, and you from remoter states, let me again, as we part, invoke your benediction on these honored graves. You feel, though the occasion is mournful, that it is good to be here. You feel that it was greatly auspicious for the cause of the country that the men of the East, and the men of the West, the men of nineteen sister states, stood side by side on the perilous ridges of the battle. You now feel it a new bond of union that they shall lie side by side on the perilous ridges of the battle. You now feel it a new bond of union that they shall lie side by side till a clarion, louder than that which marshaled them to the combat, shall awake their slumbers. God bless the Union; it is dearer to us for the blood of brave men which has been shed in its defense. The spots on which they stood and fell; these pleasant heights; the thriving village whose streets so lately rang with the strange din of war; the fields beyond the ridge, where the noble [Major General John Fulton] Reynolds held the advancing foe at bay, and, while he gave up his own life, assured by his forethought and self-sacrifice the triumph of the two succeeding days; the little streams which wind through the hills, on whose banks in aftertimes the wandering plowman will turn up, with the rude weapons of savage warfare, the fearful missiles of modern artillery; Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Cemetery, Culp, and Wolf Hill, Round Top, Little Round Top, humble names, henceforward dear and famous—no lapse of time, no distance of space, shall cause you to be forgotten. 'The whole earth,' said [1st-century bc Athenian statesman] Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War—'the whole earth is the sepulcher of illustrious men.' All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory. Surely I would do no injustice to the other noble achievements of the war, which have reflected such honor on both arms of the service, and have entitled the armies and the navy of the United States, their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and the richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates to the battles of Gettysburg.

Appears in

Gettysburg, Battle of; American Civil War; Gettysburg Address