Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Story Behind America’s Most Famous Speech
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in November 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, just months after one of the bloodiest battles in American history. What he saw there, the devastation, the loss, and the sacrifice, would shape the words he was about to deliver. At just 269 words, the Gettysburg Address would go on to become one of the most famous speeches in history. But at the time, it was largely overlooked and even criticized.
Our host, Lee Habeeb, shares the story behind the Gettysburg Address, how Lincoln redefined the Civil War as a fight not just to preserve the Union but to advance the principle that all men are created equal, and why those few words continue to shape America today.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.1 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:17.7 | Up next, the story behind the story of Lincoln's greatest speech, the Gettysburg |
| 0:23.8 | address. And we rely a lot on a terrific book called the Gettysburg Gospel by Hungarian-born |
| 0:31.0 | historian Gabor Barrett, who was the director at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. |
| 0:38.6 | And I have a particular love affair with Gettysburg |
| 0:40.9 | because my dad went to college there. |
| 0:43.1 | And I have walked the battlegrounds |
| 0:44.9 | and taken trips all the way down to Vicksburg with my dad. |
| 0:49.4 | And now the story behind the story |
| 0:51.7 | of the Gettysburg Address. |
| 0:53.5 | The Gettysburg address. |
| 1:07.8 | He arrived in the small Pennsylvania town on November 18, 1863, the day before he was to give one of his few national addresses. He wasn't alone. Gettysburg population at the time |
| 1:14.0 | was less than 3,000, but nearly 15,000 people would gather the very next day at the official |
| 1:20.6 | dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive |
| 1:26.6 | battles of the Civil War. |
| 1:29.3 | President Abraham Lincoln arrived early because he wanted to see the battlefield. |
| 1:33.8 | To see in person what he had only seen before on maps and official reports, |
| 1:39.3 | he wanted to see the ground and walk the ground. |
| 1:42.9 | It is said that it is a place if you let it, where the land will speak to you. |
| 1:48.1 | It spoke to Lincoln. |
... |
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