Abraham Lincoln's Remarks to Citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 18, 1863

Source citation
Remarks to Citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 18, 1863, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 7: 16-17, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.
Original source
New York Tribune
Type
Speech
Date Certainty
Exact
Transcriber
Transcription adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), edited by Roy P. Basler
Adapted by Don Sailer, Dickinson College
The following transcript has been adapted from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953).

Remarks to Citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 18, 1863

I appear before you, fellow-citizens, merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while at least, were I to commence to make a speech. I do not appear before you for the purpose of doing so, and for several substantial reasons. The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make. [Laughter.] In my position it is somewhat important that I should not say any foolish things.

A VOICE---If you can help it.

Mr. LINCOLN---It very often happens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at all. [Laughter.] Believing that is my present condition this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from addressing you further.

Related Documents
Gettysburg Address (Hay Draft), November 19, 1863
Author
Gettysburg, PA
How to Cite This Page: "Abraham Lincoln's Remarks to Citizens of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 18, 1863," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/25107.