The “Nicolay Copy,” earliest known handwritten version of the Gettysburg Address.

One hundred and fifty years ago, President Lincoln ascended the speaker’s platform to give over the course of two, short minutes one of the most eloquent speeches ever uttered. His words stand in timeless tribute to those, on both sides of those vast fields and hills of Gettysburg, who gave all they had to preserve freedom and government by consent.

President Coolidge being presented an original parchment of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address by the Italian Republican League of New York, February 12, 1927.

One of six Presidents to visit the battlefield at Gettysburg up to that time, Calvin Coolidge came here in 1928, honoring not only what brave men did there but what one man said there,

“We do not come to lament, but to give thanks. With one acclaim the people bestow upon them all that divine salutation, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ To express our devotion we have come to the field of Gettysburg. It ranks as one of the great historic battle grounds of this continent. In the magnitude of its importance it compares with the Plains of Abraham, with Saratoga, and with Yorktown. It is associated with a great battle between the Union and Confederate forces and with one of the greatest addresses ever delivered by one of the greatest men ever in the world, Abraham Lincoln.”