This is an enormous battle round this little town. A hundred and 75 thousand troops are supposed to have taken part. It's by far the bloodiest battle in the whole american civil war. We still haven't so thantienam was the one day when when you kner did have more people diey. But this is thet biggest battle. I called fom all your notes. So let me just go on. This this battle has happened. What did the American public think of it? They thought it was a terrible, a terrible slaughter. The concept of victory and loss, i think, was something added later, but at the time, it was viewed as a gh
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates. Opening with " Four score and seven years ago," it became one of the most influential statements of national purpose, asserting that America was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Among those inspired were Martin Luther King Jr whose "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later, echoed Lincoln's opening words.
With
Catherine Clinton
Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas and International Professor at Queen's University, Belfast
Susan-Mary Grant
Professor of American History at Newcastle University
And
Tim Lockley
Professor of American History at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson.