Also:http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=519569
Also:http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=519569
Was listening to a historian talking about it yesterday. Another myth is that newspapers of the day panned the speech. Actually democrat papers hated it, republican papers loved it. I don’t know but it seems reasonable that some democrat newspaper hack wrote - The speech was like something he threw together on the back of an envelope. And the legend was born.
Actually he put a lot of thought and effort into the speech.
Another thing this guy pointed out is that it was highly unusual in that day for Presidents to give speeches (as unbelievable as that seems to us). It was something they just didn’t do. So just the fact that the President was giving a speech was huge news in and of itself.