Gettysburg Address

[Eva Elisabeth]

..and after the speech he said to Lamon: "Lamont, that speech won't scour!" (While Everett said: "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.") Great point, Roger!

I doubt he did or needed to ask a pastor for advice on religious gloss for a speech. He did though call on the landscape architect in charge of the cemetery, William Saunders, to learn the topography of the site. D. Donald suggests he chose the rhyming "four scores" for stylistic reasons ("these cadences were somberly musical ") and because he preferred short words to long words. Donald furthermore supposes he might have read it to Seward the previous evening after working further on it at Will's house in Gettysburg. BTW, the scours were in the speech from the beginning, while "under God" does appear in neither the Hay nor the Nicolay copy.