Thursday, November 21, 2013

John Malveaux: 'Ridiculed at first in some prominent quarters...the [Gettysburg] address is now regarded as one of the finest speeches ever given.'

President Abraham Lincoln (ABC News)

John Malveaux of www.MusicUNTOLD.com writes:

November 20, 2013

The speech was really, really short
Lincoln's speech, a mere 271 words if you use the version that's attributed to Lincoln, took only two minutes. The New York Times reported of the Gettysburg Address: "It was delivered (or rather read from a sheet of paper which the speaker held in his hand) in a very deliberate manner, with strong emphasis, and with a most business-like air."
The Gettysburg Address was ridiculed at first
One of the world's best-remembered speeches, it includes the line, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Ridiculed at first in some prominent quarters -- The Chicago Times, for one, citing "silly, flat and dish-watery utterances" -- the address is now regarded as one of the finest speeches ever given. In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr., kicking off his "I Have a Dream" speech before a crowd of 250,000 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, noted Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect "five score years ago." The phrase of course invoked the address whose words were etched into the interior of the monument just a few steps behind the civil rights icon.
John Malveaux

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