When the armies withdrew after that three-day battle in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, it was a hellish scene of carnage: 8,000 human corpses and 5,000 dead horses strewn across the fields. The toll would grow to thousands more in the days that followed as men succumbed to their mortal wounds.
In the summer heat, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtain faced a pressing need to identify and bury the dead. But he also felt compelled to give meaning to the bloody tragedy and hope to the future.
Curtain enlisted the help of leading Gettysburg citizen, David Wills, who immediately acquired 17 acres for a battlefield cemetery and began planning its dedication. Looking for someone who could with "artful words ... sweeten the poisoned air of Gettysburg." Wills naturally turned to Edward Everett for those words.
Everett had inherited the mantle of Daniel Webster, the nation's leading orator at the time of his death in 1852. The Bostonian had long been recognized for his deft and graceful use of language, intuitive dramatic sense, musical voice and magnetic presence.
--Old Secesh
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