Why was the Gettysburg Address written?
From July 1–3, 1863, more than 160,000 American soldiers clashed in the Battle of Gettysburg, in what would prove to be a turning point of the Civil War.[4] The battle also had a major impact on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which numbered only 2,400 inhabitants.[5] The battlefield contained the bodies of more than 7,500 dead soldiers and several thousand horses[6] of the Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia, and the stench of rotting bodies in the humid July air was overpowering.[7] Interring the dead in a dignified and orderly manner became a high priority for the few thousand residents of Gettysburg. Initially, the town planned to buy land for a cemetery and then ask the families of the dead to pay for their burial. However, David Wills, a wealthy 32-year-old attorney, objected to this idea and wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gregg Curtin, suggesting instead a National Cemetery to be funded by the states.
