Location of Lincoln Speech Identified
By Leon Reed · Originally published January 2023 · pp. 21
Location of Lincoln Speech Identified
by Leon Reed Hundreds of people passing through Gettysburg National Cemetery around 2 p.m. on Remembrance Day (Nov. 19) were curious what a group of 8-10 people was doing with the spool of red, white, and blue ribbon on both sides of the fence separating the National and Evergreen cemeteries. As one member of the group explained to some curious boy scouts, “you’re the first people since the day Mr. Lincoln gave his speech to see exactly where the president stood to deliver that speech.” That insight is the result of a decade’s work by former Disney animator and Lincoln buff Christopher Oakley, his “New Media” students at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, advanced software that allowed a fresh look at six photographs taken the day of Lincoln’s speech, a variety of other high-tech tools, and the street smarts of a variety of Civil War, photography and technology buffs. Oakley had announced his findings the previous day at the Lincoln Forum conference. Previous “guesses” about the location included the site of the Henry Bush Brown Lincoln monument near the rostrum, the site of the present-day Soldiers National Monument, and various other spots in Evergreen Cemetery. In recent years, a rough consensus emerged that the speaker’s platform was located “somewhere in Evergreen Cemetery, not too far beyond the present-day fence,” which wasn’t there in 1863. Finding Lincoln’s location wasn’t the original effort of Oakley’s “Digital Lincoln Project,” which he started at UNC–Asheville in 2013. His first project was to create a realistic digital Lincoln “and bring him to life reading the Gettysburg Address.” The effort to find the speaker’s platform spun out of this project. “We started with the written record and then turned our attention to the six known photos of the event,” said Oakley. There were two distinct phases of photo research: enhancing the photos and then studying them carefully to get as much information as possible out of the photos. “They are rich with detail,” said Oakley, and contain “lots of information.” The team identified the precise locations from which the photos were taken, to allow
Christopher Oakley and Civil War News author Leon Reed pose at the spot where Lincoln stood to deliver the speech.
triangulation. Four were taken from two places in the cemetery, one was taken from the second floor of the Evergreen Cemetery gatehouse, and the sixth was taken from where the Quality Inn stands today. The research also involved 3-D modeling “and some old-fashioned sleuthing.” Oakley’s team concluded that the platform was much larger than the agreed-upon size, was shaped like a trapezoid, and straddled the boundary between the cemeteries. Most of the seats were in Evergreen but the speakers were standing in the National Cemetery. They also concluded that the people on the platform sat in a semicircle, not straight rows. Saturday’s walking expedition included Jennifer Schuessler, the New York Times reporter who crafted a front-page article in the morning’s paper about Oakley’s announcement; an archivist from the Library of Congress; several of his photo research collaborators, and a few conference attendees interested in the project. They set off from the Quality Inn and stopped at each camera position to view the photo(s) taken from that spot and discuss how the information helped pin down the location. They wound up at the site of the platform and used the ribbon to mark the dimensions of the platform. Along with a few curious spectators who joined them, they then took turns posing at “the spot.” When asked if it really mattered where Lincoln stood, Oakley described the experiences of his students. “At first, almost none of them were interested in history; they joined the program for the technology; but as we got deeper into the project, they all became interested in history.” He added, “When we came to Gettysburg to familiarize everyone with the site and take reference photos, I noticed that as we got closer to the site, all the normal horsing around stopped. By the time we got to the site it was complete silence: the kids thought they were on hallowed ground. Knowing you are standing on the spot where Lincoln actually gave the speech ignites the imagination and transports you back.” Leon Reed is a retired Senate aide and U.S. history teacher. He lives in Gettysburg and is the author of History in Granite and Bronze: The Civil War Artwork of Gettysburg, Antietam, and Washington, D.C.
Christopher Oakley stands at spot (near 1st Minnesota memorial urn) where Alexander Gardner took three photos on November 19, 1863.
Christopher Oakley stands at spot Lincoln waited to mount platform.