From "Recollections of Rev. H.C. Holloway"

Thousands were packed tightly in the Soldiers National Cemetery on Thursday, November 19, 1863.  It was an unusually mild day for late fall.  H.C. Holloway, who was a student at Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College in 1863, was one of those in attendance.   Here is his memory of the dedication ceremony, and President Lincoln, that late morning.

“It was a beautiful morning, a cloudless sky and the sun shone out in glorious splendor.

“It is estimated that 15,000 to 20,000 were present…The Marine Band of Washington, D.C. was leading the organization in the way of music.  The President had about him members of his Cabinet.  Besides these, many other distinguished men of national reputation and fame were present.

“The vast column [parade], as it moved toward its destination, was impressive and beautiful.”

Mr. Holloway described the long speech of the Honorable Edward Everett – the keynote speaker of the occasion.  He was complimentary in his opinion, although the two-hour speech was long for all.  Then he remembered the President:

“As he came forward, he seemed to me, and I was sitting near to him, visibly to dominate the scene, and while over his plain and rugged countenance appeared to settle a great melancholy, it was somehow lightened by a great hope.  As he began to speak, I instinctively felt that the occasion was taking on a new grandeur, as of a great moment in history, and then there followed, in slow and very impressive and far-reaching utterance, the words with which the whole world has long been familiar.  As each word was spoken it appeared to me so clearly fraught with a message, not only for us of his day, but for the untold generations of men, that before he concluded I found myself possessed of a reverential awe for its complete justification of the great war he was conducting, as if conducted, as in truth it was, in the interest of mankind.”

From The Gettysburg Compiler , 21 November 1914