Gettysburg Address: Americans celebrate two-minutes of history Despite the numbing cold, an audience of war veterans, Lincoln impersonators, Civil War buffs and schoolchildren sat riveted as an actor in costume performed the speech that Frank Williams, the noted Lincoln historian, described as an "ode to democracy." In a keynote address, James McPherson, the Pulitzer-prize winning Princeton historian, reminded listeners that when Lincoln spoke, he was genuinely fearful that the experiment in republican democracy that had begun "four score and seven years ago" with the Declaration of Independence might yet "perish from the earth." Although the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 was later seen to be the high-water mark of Confederate advance, at the time the American Civil War still had 17 months to run before Union forces could claim a victory that preserved a United States that in turn shaped the destiny of the world. "What kind of world would have emerged from the two World Wars," asked Professor McPherson, "without the existence of a strong United States?" For many in the audience the big attraction of the Gettysburg Address - a text that still forms a part of every American's schooling - was the power of its simplicity set against the verbiage of contemporary politics and cable news. Scott Stewart, a 50-year-old private equity manager, came dressed in tailcoat and stovepipe hat to remember a speech whose greatness has been acknowledged not just by Americans, but by people around the world from Gandhi to Tolstoy; and from Churchill to David Lloyd George. "It was so wonderfully succinct," said Mr Stewart. He captured the meaning of the country at the same time as he paid homage to those who gave their lives, creating something that was universal and international - and he did all in two minutes. Historians parsing the speech, like the Lincoln biographer Ronald White, say Lincoln's economy of language is born out of his love of the Aesop's Fables, the King James bible and Shakespeare, noting that of the 272 words in the Gettysburg Address, 204 are hard, one-syllable, Anglo Saxon-origin words. "While Gettysburg had great military significance, leaving 51,000 wounded on both sides," added Frank Williams, founding chair of the Lincoln Forum, "it became even more so because of how Lincoln morphed this horrible battle into an ode for democracy." As the crowd dispersed among the war memorials and drifting autumn leaves, there was much discussion also about what relevance the Gettysburg Address held today, a time not of Civil War, but of deeply divided politics have left a majority Americans despairing of modern Washington. Prof Jennifer L Weber, a Lincoln historian, sees recent concern over the state of American democracy being a factor in the eruption of organisations like the Tea Party and the Libertarian and Occupy movements. "With the amount of money and outside influence now in Washington, if you put the emphasis on 'of the people, by the people, for the people', I think that makes the Gettysburg Address incredibly relevant today," she said, "because I think that we are at least in danger of drifting away from those ideals."