The story of the Gettysburg Address-and what it can teach us today

He arrived in the small Pennsylvania town on November 18, 1863, a day before he was to give one of his few national addresses. He wasn’t alone. Gettysburg’s population at the time was less than 3,000, but nearly 15,000 people would gather the next day at the official dedication ceremony for the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War.