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On November 2, 1863, several months after the battle of Gettysburg, David Wills, a local judge and prominent Pennsylvania citizen, invited Abraham Lincoln to make a "few appropriate remarks" at the consecration of a cemetery for the Union war dead.  Edward Everett, then the young nation’s foremost northern orator, had been invited to speak on September 23, but Everett needed more time for preparation so fate put both of the men on the same program on November 19, 1863.