Transcript: The Gettysburg Address

Gates: On a blustery afternoon on November 19th, 1863, a bare-headed Lincoln rose to deliver his address. All around him, witnesses said, hung the lingering stench of death. Clinton: I think he thought that he ought to be present in the blood shed and the suffering -- that it was wrong for him to pretend that he could in any way be apart from it

Clinton: At Gettysburg you saw a man whose spirit had been purified in the fires of the slaughter of the civil war, in the determination he had to hold the union together. And it was– you know, in just a couple of hundred words he was able to say how all Americans either were feeling or should be feeling.

Graphic of Gettysburg address

Gates: We all know how it starts – four score and seven years ago. It is familiar to any American and in many ways; we’ve taken it for granted. But if you look closer you realize it is a work of genius – in just 272 words Abraham Lincoln was able to make us believe that liberty and union were inextricably intertwined -- he made us understand that the war was now about slavery without ever mentioning the word.