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...Confederate forces at Gettysburg. This was the Civil War's only battle to ever take place on Northern soil. On November 19, 1863, that same battlefield was officially dedicated as a national cemetery. The chief speaker was Edward Everett, a noted orator of the period. As what many have described as an afterthought, President Lincoln was invited "to make a few appropriate remarks." after Everett spoke for nearly two hours. He reportedly worked and reworked his speech, seeking to make it as perfect as possible yet some sources claim that Lincoln's address was merely a brief, hardly thought-out dissertation. The crowd had listened for two hours to Everett's extravagant and markedly elaboarate oratory when Lincoln rose slowly, put on his glasses, glanced at a slip of paper, then spoke gravely in his clear, high-pitched voice. In a little less than three minutes, he finished his entire Gettysburg Address. According to most historians, he thought it a failure, as did some of the era's newspapers. Only a few recognized it as one of the noblest speeches ever made by any man. Everett was one such admirer of the address as was evidenced by his writing the following in a...