Appendix 2 Summary

Today the National Park Service runs Gettysburg battlefield and cemetery. Tourists always want to see the spot where Lincoln stood as he gave the Gettysburg Address. The obvious spot is where the Soldiers' National Monument now stands, in the center of a half-circle of graves.

However, an 1865 note written by David Wills to W.Y. Selleck indicates that is the wrong spot. He says Lincoln stood with the graves behind him on a speaker's platform facing the town. This seems more likely because the crowd would have had more open ground to stand upon. Also the graves would have been more protected from looters.

However, Frederick Tilberg, a respected park historian, argued in a 1973 article that reporters wrote that Lincoln stood on a "rise" with a view of the entire landscape. This puts him back on the Selleck site. Journalists at the scene...