Gerry Bowler: 160 Years On, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Remains One of History’s Greatest Speeches

Commentary Any list of the greatest speeches in history must include the Sermon on the Mount, Pericles’s Oration on the Athenian Dead, Winston Churchill’s offer of “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream,” and the 271 words Abraham Lincoln uttered on Nov. 19, 1863. In the third summer of the American Civil War, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led an invasion of Union territory, striking into Pennsylvania with his Army of Northern Virginia. Lee hoped that victory on Northern soil would encourage the government in Washington to lose heart and come to terms with the secessionist states of the South....