Marshal Ward Hill Lamon tells President Lincoln about the Program for the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery

November 15, 1863

Journalist Noah Brooks recalled: ““On the Sunday before he went to Gettysburg, Lincoln invited me to go to Gardner’s photography gallery where he was to sit for his picture.  He took along a two-page supplement of the ‘Boston Journal’ in which was printed Mr Everett’s Gettysburg oration which E. had sent him.  In the carriage, on Lincoln’s showing me the speech, occurred the conversation which Major Lambert quotes.  When he came back from Gettysburg, Lincoln told me that he made several changes in the manuscript of his own address after he got to Gettysburg, and others ‘as he went along’ while delivering it on the field.  But all of these changes did not appear in the fac-simile afterwards produced under Lincoln’s own supervision.  The explanation of this [is] sufficiently obvious.  Lincoln, who did not appear to think very highly of his own speech, could not remember just what changes he did make while he read it on the field.”  Brooks memory of the date was probably off by a week.”

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