“Strike when the iron is hot.” - Anonymous

 From“Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

November 18

The principal speaker at the November 19, 1863 ceremony dedicating theGettysburg cemetery was Edward Everett from Massachusetts. As an after thought the organizers invited Lincoln “to make a few appropriate remarks.” FromLincoln’s perspective, the dedication of this cemetery offered him the opportunity to lay out succinctly the North’s war aims – to explain why all these dead had not died in vain. This opportunity was particularly appealing in that virtually every Northern governor would be in attendance, and such a grouping, at that time, was a rarity indeed.