Today in AFJ History

November 19, 2013  

Gettysburg Address: too late for this edition

Seven score and 10 years ago, President Lincoln dedicated the graveyard at Gettysburg, Pa., with a few words of immeasurable influence. (Reread it here; listen to it read and animated here.)

And how was this address covered by the Army & Navy Journal, then just a few months old? At right is a slice of the front page of our Nov. 21, 1863, edition.

A detail of the front page of the Army & Navy Journal, Nov. 21, 1863.

A detail of the front page of the Army & Navy Journal, Nov. 21, 1863.

No fuller account of the dedication subsequently appeared in the Journal, although there was a brisk debate carried over several issues of the proper place for a memorial to the Regular Army soldiers who fell in the battle.

And in January 1864, Little, Brown, advertised a pamphlet containing a transcript of “Mr. Everett’s Address” with “an account of the Ceremony of Dedication, with President Lincoln’s remarks and the other exercises of the occasion.” The publication was apparently sold for 87 cents, with proceeds to go to the Cemetery Monument Fund.