FDR at Gettysburg on video

FDR throws out the first ball, Washington, D.C. 24 April 1934
FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York

During his presidency, FDR gave two speeches at Gettysburg, in 1934 and 1938. I've been remembering them this week, since November 19 is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

YouTube has video transfers of some newsreels made on the occasion of FDR's speech at Gettysburg on July 4, 1938, the 75th anniversary of the battle. Reading the speeches now, it is possible to see how, all those years after the end of the Civil War, Roosevelt is still working to re-unite the country. The veterans on that occasion, old men who returned for their last reunion, seemed willing to shake hands and meet as friends. All these years later, 80 years after Roosevelt's 1938 speech at the dedication of a peace memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield, the first comments on the YouTube posting of Roosevelt's speech wave the banner of the lost cause bitter-enders, still not ready for peace.




For more on FDR's 1934 and 1938 Gettysburg speeches, see -- Thomas W. Benson, "FDR at Gettysburg: The New Deal and the Rhetoric of Presidential Leadership," The Rhetoric of Presidential Leadership, ed. Leroy Dorsey (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 145-183.