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When Something is Easily Read and Understood, Then Much Effort Has Gone into The Writing
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” — Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales (1657)
On November 19, 1863, two men stepped to a podium at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The first was Edward Everett — former senator, former governor of Massachusetts, former president of Harvard, and the most celebrated orator in America. The second was Abraham Lincoln.
Everett spoke for two hours and five minutes. His oration was a masterwork of classical rhetoric — learned, elaborate, historically detailed, and formally magnificent. The crowd was awed. The newspapers praised it. And within a generation, virtually no one could recall a single sentence of it.
Lincoln, on the other hand, spoke for two minutes. His address was 272 words. He had reportedly written it on the back of an envelope on the train — though historians debate even that detail. What is not in dispute is what those 272 words accomplished: they redefined the purpose of the Civil War, reframed the meaning of American democracy, and produced one of the most quoted passages of prose in the English language. Everett himself wrote to Lincoln the…
