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Visiting Gettysburg, the vast field where Union forces clashed with Confederate troops during the Civil War in the United States in the 1860s, was in essence revisiting history. Having been an avid student of American history, especially that part of it so closely connected with Abraham Lincoln --- my readings on the sixteenth American President have gone on since I was in school --- it was a revealing trip to Gettysburg that I looked forward to on a bright sunny morning in September. My youngest sibling Nadeem had already taken me on a visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. It was now the turn of Sadrul, the third among us five siblings, to drive me to Gettysburg.
As we killed the miles, it was that unforgettable speech Lincoln delivered at Gettysburg that I recalled. Since that pivotal moment in history came to pass, Lincoln’s seminal words --- government of the people, by the people, for the people --- have been part of the world’s political lexicon. It is quite reasonable to expect that students of politics and history around the world have consistently been fascinated by what Lincoln referred to on 19 November 1863 as ‘a few appropriate remarks’ on his part.
The Battle of Gettysburg in early July 1863, as we now know, caused casualties to the tune of 51,112 on both sides. Of these figures, there were the killed, the wounded and the captured or missing. Following the battle, as an information board informs visitors, 7,500 soldiers were buried hastily in shallow graves on the battlefield. That preceded the establishment of a proper burial ground, to the dedication of which President Lincoln travelled from Washington in November.
The battle in Gettysburg was a defining period in the prosecution of the Civil War. It was a sign that the Union army of the north was inching its way to eventual victory in the conflict, although it would take almost two years more before Confederate General Robert E. Lee would surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. That would be in April 1865. Sadrul, my sister-in-law Zinat and I were in sombre mood as we approached Gettysburg, lined and dotted as the place was with hundreds of graves bearing the remains of the war dead.
Cemeteries are never happy places to be in, for they speak of those who have gone and remind you of the times when you too will become memory. It was in silence that the three of us stepped into the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg, imagining the noise, the chaos, the pains of those falling to the fury of battle in those terrible July days.
Gettysburg is and always will be a protest against war. At the same time, it has consistently been a message about the principles men are ready to fight for, driven by the urge to defeat the enemy and in the end seeing their futures perish amid the gunfire and the blood that flows from them. But Gettysburg remains too an instance of the inspiration leaders often ignite into their nations, the better to convince them that beyond the horrors of war the future promises to bring forth a new dawn in the lives of citizens. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, the states which had seceded in order to ensure that slavery remained untouched, was uninspiring a leader because his politics went against the time-honoured realities of history.
But observe Abraham Lincoln. His two-minute speech at Gettysburg left the audience expecting more and yet, when the President sat down after those remarks, they were obviously disappointed. The disappointment was tied to the fact that Edward Everett, an academic and politician and the speaker preceding Lincoln, paid his tribute to the fallen in a long speech of two hours. Those two hours were in sharp contrast to Lincoln’s two minutes. Today hardly anyone remembers Everett’s speech. Neither is there anyone who seems to have read the entire text of his remarks. But those two minutes, Lincoln’s few appropriate remarks, were to secure a perch among the greatest speeches in human history. Sadrul, Zinat and I observed, as we went deeper into that now silent battlefield in Gettysburg, the many statues and other monuments commemorating the dead and the wounded of July 1863.
But we were quite unable to pinpoint the exact spot where Lincoln had spoken on 19 November. I remembered reading that on his journey from Washington to Gettysburg, the President had scribbled the sentences that would turn out to be his speech on pieces of paper, storing them in his hat as he did so. Lincoln, whose oratory was known for its spontaneity, did not have any requirement of speechwriters, something leaders around the world cannot do without these days. On that September morning in Gettysburg, we accosted a gentleman, a friendly American. My brother inquired of him if he could indicate to us the spot where Lincoln had stood and delivered his speech.
The gentleman asked us to follow him. We did and after about a minute he stopped under a tree and pointed to the graves, now in an enclosure. As he put it, there were three spots, any one of which could have been where Lincoln stood and spoke before the select crowd in November 1863. The third spot he pointed to was where an American flag fluttered in the breeze. Many people, said this genial, elderly American, believed that it was there below the flag that Lincoln had spoken. But, he said, no one really knew. He sadly noted that perhaps it had not occurred to anyone in the 1860s to ensure that the spot where Lincoln and all the other dignitaries had gathered at Gettysburg on the day be set aside for posterity.
For me, walking through the silence at Gettysburg was a travel back in time. Often there are all those moments when you feel, as you go through the narrow pathways and broad highways of history, that you were there when momentous events occurred in the life of humankind. That was the way I felt. I could hear Lincoln speak the words which catapulted Gettysburg to immortality on 19 November 1863: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
As we made our way out of Gettysburg, we drove by rows of homes in the vicinity of the old battlefield. My good guess was that descendants of many of the soldiers who died in July 1863 inhabited those homes and so were a link to the history that Gettysburg would be. Close to a century later, Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of allied forces in the Second World War and later President of the United States, built a home in Gettysburg where he spent his post-presidential years.
As we hit a busy street for our return to Maryland, I noticed a house which remains testimony to history. It is unoccupied, likely a national treasure. On the door is a hint that the place is a Civil War building and has been there since the long-ago battle. I tried conjuring up the fear in which its residents spent their days as the fierce battle raged around them. Could they make their way to the dedication ceremony for the fallen on the day Abraham Lincoln raised Gettysburg to the sublimity of time and space?
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Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy, history and culture