1863

Today is the 157th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Although some historians consider his Second Inaugural to be his "greatest" speech, I think it was the Gettysburg Address--not to take anything from the Second Inaugural. And, if not his "greatest," perhaps his delivery at Cooper Union in February 1860 was Lincoln's most important. The speech at Cooper Union, according to Harold Holzer, "made Abraham Lincoln President." I agree. In New York, at Cooper Union, Lincoln accepted an invitation to speak in front of one of his chief adversary's (Salmon Portland Chase--no, I know it sounds fishy, but that was his name) supporters and on the home turf of one of his other opponents (William Seward). His success there won him the Republican nomination, not without a fight, and, hence, the Presidency. And if Lincoln hadn't been elected President..... But back to Gettysburg. Lincoln was not the featured speaker; that was Edward Everett former US Senator and president of Harvard, one of the silver tongues of the age. The occasion was the dedication of the cemetery in which about 7-8,000 soldiers were buried after the decisive Battle of Gettysburg the previous July. The President was invited almost as an afterthought, receiving a request to deliver a few words only a few weeks before hand. (The dedication was delayed for about two months, not quite, to allow Everett to recover from a stroke or heart attack (I forget which). No, he didn't write the speech on the back of an envelope on the train ride from Washington to the small Pennsylvania town. He put a great deal of thought into it. There are several drafts, five or six, and some evidence that he was polishing one of them the night before. Purportedly, one of the "drafts" was written afterward, when a friend asked Lincoln for the copy. Not wanting to disappoint his friend since all the drafts had gone elsewhere, he wrote what he thought/remembered he had said 272 words, that's all it was. But what words they were! After the speeches, Everett purportedly said to Lincoln, "I wish I could have said in two and a half hours what you said in two and a half minutes." That, "two and a half minutes," might have been stretching it. Many in the audience didn't even know the President had started, let alone finished, his address. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address transformed what Jefferson called, "The Empire of Liberty." Lincoln didn't believe that blacks and whites were equal; after all, he was still, in part, a man of his times. But he did strongly hold that blacks and whites shared the opportunity for equality. In fact, that is what the Gettysburg Address did. It changed the way Americans came to view the Declaration of Independence (To Lincoln, the Declaration, not the Constitution, was the bedrock on which American priciples and ideals rested.) and the entire American experiment. No longer were freedom and liberty the sole focuses (foci?). Equality took its place among them. "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That was key, a firm recommitment to the Jeffersonian ideal that "all men are created equal," blacks and whites both. He knew this would take time to catch on, for people to accept this. Lincoln understood people. They won't hear an idea until they are ready to listen to it. (How long has it taken people to heed the greatest message of all time, that of Jesus, "Love thy neighbor as thyself?" Not only didn't people listen then; they killed Jesus.) Indeed, his Gettysburg Address was met with mixed reviews, some very critical, "not worthy of an American President." It wasn't just the message, but its presentation. The words were poetic. Why not just say, "87 years ago..." or even "In 1776....?" No, he wrote "Four score and seven years ago....." Doing the math, he traced the beginnings of the American experiment to 1776, the year of the Declaration, not the victory over Britain or the adoption of the Constitution. Although many, especially in the audience that overcast day, didn't realize it, he likened the soldiers who died to those of Pericles 2,000 years before. Like the Greeks, the Union soldiers who fell on those July days died for us, for our democracy. "We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract." It was up to future Americans to make certain that "these dead shall not have died in vain." To me, at least, the Gettysburg Address remains the greatest articulation of the concept of self-rule: "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." And Lincoln wrote it.