Download - Lincoln and the Founders - 272 Words
In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Museum and Foundation challenged people from all walks of life to write 272 words on Lincoln, the Address, or another cause that stirred their passions. If Mr. Lincoln had been able to take part, his submission might have looked something like this.
As imagined by Bob Willard, Oxnard, California
Abraham Lincoln wrote out a copy of the Gettysburg Address at the request of Edward Everett, the
principal speaker at the November 19, 1863 dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg. This version is now
at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Il. It contains 272 words.
Bob Willard, who imagined Mr. Lincoln’s 272 words after noticing the coincidental 272 words of the Founders, is a Lincoln enthusiast of more than half a century. He is active with a number of Lincoln organizations: Abraham Lincoln Association (board member and former vice president), Abraham Lincoln Institute (board member and former president), Lincoln Forum (life member and advisor), and Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia (life member and former treasurer). In 2005, he traveled 1,000 miles, including nearly 200 miles on foot, from Lincoln’s birthplace to his tomb, visiting major Lincoln sites in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln’s Imagined
272 Words
Two-seventy-two, eh? That’s the number of words
that are in the copy of my Gettysburg speech I wrote
out for Edward Everett. We both spoke at the
dedication of the cemetery there – he, for two
hours; I, two minutes.
I never made it a practice to count the words I write.
I just try to write words that count.
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not
spring from the sentiments embodied in the
Declaration of Independence.” I said that in
Independence Hall on Washington’s birthday in 1861
just before I was to raise a flag there. I took off my
coat before raising that flag, but someone, perhaps
noticing the photographer nearby, urged me to put
it back on.
Before listing the “abuses and usurpations” by the
British monarch, the Declaration of Independence
puts forth two great revolutionary ideas – that all
people are equal with natural rights, and that
government derives its power from the consent of
the governed. The Civil War was fought to preserve
both ideas. If we had failed, not only would millions
of bondsmen and their children continue to be
subjugated by other men, but the idea of self-
government might have been extinguished. What I
called “the last best hope of earth” might no longer
inspire all nations.
Four score and seven years before I spoke at
Gettysburg, the Founders had written words that
count. From their opening “When in the course of
human events” to their concluding “new guards for
their future security,” their words inspired my own
words: “new birth of freedom” and “government
of…, by… and for the people.”
Their 272 words.
The Founders’
272 Words
When in the Course of human events it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another and
to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, — That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying
its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that Governments long-
established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath
shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The heart of the Declaration of Independence, not including the list of “abuses and usurpations” of King George
III, contains the guiding principles – equality and self-government – under which the United States was
established. It contains the same number of words as the Gettysburg Address.