The battle wore on. The broken lines of frightening on both sides: after three days of battle, 51,000 human beings lay under the smoke either dead or maimed . Then, on the fourth day, both armies marched on; that is, those who could still march. The dead and the wounded had to be left behind.
For the small town of Gettysburg, with only 2400 inhabitants at the time, the battle was at first an unimaginable horror, and then a huge task. As the armies moved quickly away after the three days of fighting, there were thousands of maimed soldiers to care for, and thousands of bodies to bury. A new cemetery was quickly dedicated, and the townspeople dealt as best they could with the situation. The actual burial process took months, and it was not until November that President Lincoln came to dedicate the cemetery, where he gave a speech that was to become one of the most famous in American history — the Gettysburg Address. [180 words]