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Posted On: 05/07/2018 6:04:06 PM
Post# of 27277
The Gettysburg address was not written on an envelope
Americans love the image of Abraham Lincoln sitting on the train, jotting down his final thoughts for one of the world's most epic speeches on the back of an envelope — just like they love the story of George Washington and the cherry tree and Richard Gere and the gerbil. Except that none of those stories are true. (Sorry.)
The origins of the story of Lincoln and the envelope are uncertain, but logic can pretty much rule it out. Nineteenth-century trains weren't exactly smooth riding, so trying to jot something down on an envelope mid-journey would have been at best impractical and annoying. It's also kind of hard to believe that Lincoln would have been writing the entire speech at the last minute. In fact if you spend some time studying the historical record (which you'd have to be pretty bored to do if your goal is to just work out what sort of stationery Lincoln used to write the Gettysburg address, but whatever) ThoughtCo says you'd find at least two people who would testify to the fact that the address was written in Washington D.C. before Lincoln got on the train. Which matters, for some reason, though no one is really sure why.
Americans love the image of Abraham Lincoln sitting on the train, jotting down his final thoughts for one of the world's most epic speeches on the back of an envelope — just like they love the story of George Washington and the cherry tree and Richard Gere and the gerbil. Except that none of those stories are true. (Sorry.)
The origins of the story of Lincoln and the envelope are uncertain, but logic can pretty much rule it out. Nineteenth-century trains weren't exactly smooth riding, so trying to jot something down on an envelope mid-journey would have been at best impractical and annoying. It's also kind of hard to believe that Lincoln would have been writing the entire speech at the last minute. In fact if you spend some time studying the historical record (which you'd have to be pretty bored to do if your goal is to just work out what sort of stationery Lincoln used to write the Gettysburg address, but whatever) ThoughtCo says you'd find at least two people who would testify to the fact that the address was written in Washington D.C. before Lincoln got on the train. Which matters, for some reason, though no one is really sure why.
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