Gettysburg Address anniversary
I was happy to arrive at the office this morning to discover that our analysis of the Gettysburg Address (written by Carl Rollyson of Baruch College, CUNY) is #1 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list in the history category for e-documents. It’s fitting, since today is the 145th anniversary of the address. Over at the Milestone Documents Blog, where the Gettysburg Address is the Doc of the Day, you can learn that the address took Lincoln only two minutes to deliver (not a surprise, given that it’s only about 278 words in length). Doris Kearns Goodwin, in Team of Rivals (suddenly all over the cultural and political landscape), recounts how the crowd sat in stunned silence when Lincoln finished the speech, bewildered at its brevity, before applauding. The speech is “now considered the most eloquent ever delivered by an American president,” notes Rollyson in his analysis.