Posted on 11/19/2018 9:27:11 AM PST by harpygoddess
Everyone has posted the speech itself (and it's included here), but the background information is also interesting - not only the situation in America at the time, but also the extent to which the structure of the speech mimics (draws from?) Thucydides' account of Pericles' 430 B.C funeral oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War.
Today is the anniversary of President Lincoln's delivery of his few "brief remarks" at the dedication of the new national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, only four or so months after the great Civil War battle there that emerged as "the high-water mark of the Confederacy."
At the time, the final issue of the war was still in some doubt, and Lincoln received second billing to a lengthy speech by Dr. Edward Everett, then president of Harvard University and reputedly America's greatest orator.
Everyone's familiar with the Gettysburg Address - didn't we all have to memorize it in grammar school? But in these troubled times, its mere 272 words remain well worth reading again.
"Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives."
One fascinating historical note is that Brian Williams was there for the whole address. Who knew?
Beautiful speech, but the War Between the States had nothing to do with preventing government of, buy and for the people from perishing.
The Southern states had no desire to impose their will upon the North.
Either Lincoln knew he was being false in this, or he truly was crazy.
Neither. Lincoln was speaking about the South severing the Union.
Severing the Union posed no threat to government by, for, and of the people.
Even if Lincoln truly expected it to perish in the Southern States after succession, there was no reason to suppose it would not endure in the North.
Could be Lincolbn was a nuts as John Brown, but more likely he was just a practitioner of the “Big Lie” technique.
H L Mencken has the most cogent commentary on this Address
The advantage of the Gettysburg Address is that it's easier to memorize than the Declaration of Independence.
I posit that it did in Lincoln's mind. Fracturing the Union into smaller countries would eventually lead to continued divisions and destroy the American experiment. Kind of what we are facing now.
Historically, democracies were fissiparous and divided into ever smaller states which then warred against each other. If the Confederate States could secede from the union unilaterally, then so could other states, and so could Confederate states secede from the Confederacy. Lincoln foresaw endless division and petty wars, making America subject to foreign conquest.
It would have been the end of the Republic, which up until that time, and even today, has been the only durable form of self-governance devised. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation [conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal], can long endure."
Lincoln, contending that the United States is a republic, held that under the terms of the Constitution, states could not withdraw unilaterally. (With the consent of the other states and the federal government, they could withdraw.) For the sake of this Constitutional principle, he sent hundreds of thousands of young men to death. Talk about tough.
Thank you for “fissiparous”
I learned a new word today!
That's like blaming the carnage on the bank teller for balking at handing over the contents of the till to the robber.
Arguably I guess this was the last timeframe in which this country was this f’d up.
The only difference in the hate level between then and now is that we are not yet killing each other by the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands!
Lincoln was a tough-minded lawyer.
“Either Lincoln knew he was being false in this or he truly was crazy “
No he was just another politician.
I didn’t look up your word yet but I agree with your main point which is/was that the Civil War, in Lincoln’s eyes, was fought over the requirement in the Constitution that states could not just leave when they got unhappy.
This is a point well worth considering for all Americans today. Namely, should we fight a Civil War and kill a few million of ourselves or struggle on for centuries with the pettiness that surrounds the media and congressional circus in Washington, D.C.
In our case today, perhaps we can similarly get on with a Civil War and in the middle of it pass another Emancipation Proclamation. This time, it’s not slaves that would be freed it would be the American people would be freed from Liberalism and the Corporate Owned media that props it up.
Almost sounds like the speech Jackson gave before the International Military Tribunal at the beginning of the MIT trials after WW2 in Nuremberg.
“The Southern states had no desire to impose their will upon the North.” So firing on Fort Sumter had nothing to do with Southern desires not to impose their will upon the North.
The paper was right. It was absolutely silly to talk about what happened "four score and seven years ago" when what you were commemorating was the exact opposite of what you were doing.
The Confederates were trying to gain independence, and Lincoln was trying to stop them. Talking about 1776 just reminds people that the good guys were the people who broke away from the United Kingdom, not the ones that tried to stop them.
By calling forth to memory the time George Washington and others severed the American Confederacy from the United Kingdom? (Union of the Crowns.)
Why is it good the 13 colonies left the United Kingdom, but bad that 11 states left the United States?
It's rather a silly thing to remind people that 1776 commemorates the time when the "rebels" fighting for independence were the good guys.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.