FACTS ABOUT THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

1. The ceremony was for the dedication of the national cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863. It contained only the Union dead.  Some of them were being buried during the ceremony.
2. The town of Gettysburg had only 2,500 citizens and 15,000 people showed up for the ceremony. Beds were at a premium.  Lincoln stayed at the home of a prominent lawyer, along with 37 others.  Only Lincoln and Edward Everett got beds for themselves.
3. Lincoln was not the keynote speaker. That honor went to popular orator Everett.  He had been a congressman, Governor of Massachusetts, and Millard Fillmore’s Secretary of State.  He spoke for two hours and the speech was well-received.
4. Lincoln was next and spoke for only two minutes. The speech was ten sentences and 272 words.  (Everett used 13,607 words.)  Lincoln was done so quickly that there is no photo of him giving it.  There is one photo that shows him sitting on the platform.
5. Despite the myth, Lincoln did not write the speech on the train. He actually spent a lot of time on it.  He had no help.  He wrote five copies of it and gave them to various people, including Everett and his personal secretary John Hay (who was later Secretary of State).  Hay had gotten drunk the night before with come college boys.
6. The themes of the speech included devotion, democracy, equality, and sacrifice. He does not mention by name the Union, the Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, or the Battle of Gettysburg.  He did not originate the phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.  That was first used in a John Wycliffe Bible in 1734.
7. The speech was greeted with polite applause by the crowd, but few knew at the time that it was brilliant. One of the few was Everett who remarked to Lincoln that he wished he had been able to do in two hours what Lincoln had done in two minutes.  Newspapers were divided with the “peace Democrats” panning it and the Republicans and war Democrats giving positive reviews.
8. The entire speech is carved on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

https://www.wuwm.com/post/seven-facts-you-didnt-know-about-gettysburg-address#stream/0

https://www.legacy.com/news/culture-and-history/10-facts-abraham-lincoln-and-the-gettysburg-address/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/615530/facts-about-abraham-lincolns-gettysburg-address

http://www.american-historama.org/1860-1865-civil-war-era/gettysburg-address.htm