![]() Though there are different accounts about what happened next, historian all agree that Lincoln cleared his throat and asked the throngs of people for a suggestion. He preferred to make them up on the spot, ad libbing, or performing what was referred to in those days as "old thymey make 'em ups." As he looked out over the crowd ― tired, hungry, ravaged by war ― he knew one thing: He better not bomb. While most politicians wrote down their speeches, Lincoln did not. Lincoln looked down at the podium, his head feeling heavy from drinking way too much draft beer the night before. "I wanted to do less improv and more sketch, and he wanted to do things like free the slaves." "We had creative differences," Robertson had said. Their relationship had soured over the years. It was his old roommate, Lars Petric Robertson, who had performed with Lincoln in The Side Splitters. ![]() That day, according to some recently discovered memoirs, Lincoln was performing in front of the biggest crowd he'd ever played to, even bigger than when the Side Splitters had done their college tour. The pinnacle of Lincoln’s improv career came on a Thursday afternoon in November 1863, when he was standing behind a podium on the battlefield at Gettysburg. In Springfield, Lincoln studied with Dale McClose, a fire-eater and improv guru, until McClose took some hallucinogens and ended up following a young musician named Jerry Garcia to the West Coast. They started a group called the "Side Splitters." He settled in Springfield, which I believe at that time had a burgeoning improv scene, sharing a two-room flat with one bed with three guys from Michigan State. So he moved to Illinois, because that's what everyone does when they want to do improv. It’s been said that as a kid he listened obsessively to Mark Twain's comedy albums. Being a lawyer and politician was his day job, something he did where he could take time off for auditions and have nights free to do shows. The way I’ve heard it told, Lincoln never intended to go into politics. But I’ve also heard he was a founding father of improv. Sure, he grew up in a log cabin, hailed from Illinois, and ended slavery. It made me think about how great Lincoln was for this country. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Lincoln's birthday was yesterday. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. ![]() The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. ![]() The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. ![]() But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that, that nation might live. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 19 November 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USAįour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ![]()
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