By Ed Epstein
Washington, D.C.
Monday, December 30, 2024
In September 1978, President Jimmy Carter hosted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for 12 days of high-risk, often-tense negotiations at Camp David, Maryland, aimed at bringing peace between two nations that had fought four wars since 1948.
Not far up Route 15 from the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains is the historic battlefield of Gettysburg, its hundreds of memorials and its moving story.
Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, recalled in an oral history that in the midst of the talks he hit on the idea of taking Begin, Sadat and their large delegations -- who were mostly military men -- for a visit to Gettysburg on Sunday, September 10, 1978.
"Begin and Sadat were quite incompatible, so I decided to relax both of them by taking them to Gettysburg," Carter told TV documentarian Ken Burns. Just about the only non-military man was Begin, who was "quite silent" as a park ranger led a tour. "I thought he was lonely and left out," Carter recalled.
(In the photo above, Carter is in the center, with his arms on daughter Amy's shoulders. Sadat is to his left and Begin is the man wearing glasses to his right. In the right foreground, the man with the eye patch is Israeli general and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.)
But when the throng got to the site at the Gettysburg National Cemetery where the guide said Abraham Lincoln had delivered his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, Begin stole the show. "Begin, in a very quiet voice, started reciting the Gettysburg Address from memory... Everybody applauded," Carter recalled.
"Of all the things we did at Gettysburg that day, that is the moment we'll all remember," he added.
Just a few days later, Carter got the Egyptians and the Israelis to agree to the Camp David Accords for a peace framework. The documents were signed at the White House a week after the Gettysburg tour.
That day was the second time that summer that Carter had visited the battlefield. On July 6, 1863, the president -- accompanied by members of his family and southern Civil War historian Shelby Foote -- toured the battlefield. The website The Gettysburg Experience says that Carter took time that day to go to the Gettysburg home of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie to visit with Eisenhower's widow.
Thanks to Joshua Claybourn and his Claybourn's Agora Substack blog for calling our attention to this bit of timely history.
Photo from the National Archives and the White House Historical Association.