Edward Everett CDV Back marked E. Anthony, from Brady’s National Portrait Gallery. In November 1863, when the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was dedicated, Everett, by then widely renowned as the finest orator in the country, was invited to be the featured speaker. In his two-hour formal oration he compared the Battle of Gettysburg to battles of antiquity such as Marathon, and spoke about how opposing sides in previous civil wars (such as the War of the Roses and the Thirty Years' War) were able to reconcile their differences afterward. Everett's oration was followed by the now far more famous Gettysburg Address of President Lincoln. For his part, Everett was deeply impressed by the concise speech and wrote to Lincoln noting "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.