To demonstrate Lincoln's writing craft, Boritt places his speech in the context of the Battle of Gettysburg, the town of Gettysburg, PA, and the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery. This compelling account analyzes several drafts of the speech and compares various ways it has been reported. (LJ 11/15/06) (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this engrossing study, Civil War scholar Boritt (editor of The Lincoln Enigma) offers a revealing history of that most famous piece of American oratory, the Gettysburg Address. Boritt opens with an evocative description of a stench-filled, corpse-strewn Gettysburg on July 4, 1863, after the battle. When Lincoln arrived a few months later to dedicate the national cemetery, he had an important task: "to explain to the people," writes Borritt, in plain, powerful prose, "why the bloodletting must go on." After vividly recreating the delivery of the address, Boritt discusses the speech's mixed reception. Republican newspapers praised it; Democrats, viewing it as the beginning of Lincoln's re-election campaign, belittled or tried to ignore it; one Democratic newspaper called the speech a "mawkish harangue." Just as bad, Lincoln's graceful oratory was garbled in transmission to newspapers. Most interesting is Boritt's recounting of how, after Lincoln's assassination, the speech was mostly forgotten until the 1880s, when Gettysburg increasingly became a symbol of a reunion between North and South, and the Gettysburg Address took on the sheen of America's "sacred scriptures." Lincoln's poetic language, says Boritt, helps the speech live on, and the message of "sacrificial redemption" still speaks to Americans today. This elegant account will delight readers who enjoyed Garry Wills's Lincoln at Gettysburg. (Lengthy appendixes parsing drafts of the speech, however, will interest mainly aficionados.) 16 pages of b&w illus., and b&w illus. throughout. (Nov. 19) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Addressing a jubilant crowd after victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked "How long ago is it?--eighty odd years...." Before he dedicated the cemetery at Gettysburg in November, he had revised these impromptu remarks to the majestic "Four score and seven" destined to be long remembered, even by those unable to identify the event involved. After studying the Gettysburg Address for many years, Boritt (Gettysburg College) has written a comprehensive survey of the creation of the cemetery, the circumstances that brought Lincoln to Gettysburg, the assembling of the audience, the development of the language, and the resounding echoes from immediate crowd reaction to the present day. Boritt has perused the text through every draft and newspaper printing, including those that referred to the "refinished" task remaining before us. He explains that although the US fought for Union and emancipation, Lincoln mentioned neither but placed the national mission on an even higher level. By so doing, Lincoln created the most important speech in US history. This definitive, readable book belongs in every library. ^BSumming Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. J. Y. Simon Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Like Garry Wills in Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992), Boritt explores the circumstances of the Gettysburg Address. Setting the stage for his rhetorical analysis, Boritt describes the Gettysburg area in the months following the July 1863 battle. Corpses, burial workers, and field hospitals reminded visitors of the battle's scale of devastation and, so it appeared, the incompleteness of the Union victory. To comfort and encourage, then, was the agenda of the cemetery ceremony at which Lincoln spoke the following November. Famously preceded by a conventionally orotund funeral oration, Lincoln's remarks possessed such austerity and aspiration that they became a consecrated credo of American democracy. Existing in several variants in Lincoln's hand and in contemporaneous news accounts, the remarks prompt questions about which text contains the authentic Gettysburg Address, an intriguing but ultimately inconclusive endeavor that Boritt works over in appendixes. With his narrative focus on the dedication of November 19, 1863, Boritt's account has a freshness appealing in such an exhaustively examined subject. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2006 Booklist