27 June 2016
Chuck Roots
The Gettysburg
Address
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is a
literary pièce de résistance. This
brief two-minute speech has captivated historians and all lovers America for
the past 150-plus years.
It has been erroneously reported
that President Lincoln wrote this speech while riding the train from
Washington, DC to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In fact, he began writing the speech
in the White House using White House letterhead stationary. His normal approach
in crafting a speech was to work on it well in advance of the event. It is
surmised by historians in this case that the Address had not been completed
until after arriving at Gettysburg. The reason given that debunks his having
written the Address on the train points out that his handwriting was the same
as all other documents he had written – a challenging feat on a rocking and
rolling train in 1863!
The Gettysburg Address was given on
November 19, 1863. The crowd in attendance was well aware of the importance of
the Address, and they were expecting a real stem-winder. Seeing as the definition
for stem-winder is “a rousing speech, especially by a politician,” the speaker
on this occasion met that criteria. He was an American politician, pastor,
educator, diplomat, and orator. He served as a U.S. Representative, a U.S.
Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great
Britain, and United States Secretary of State. He was fluent in Greek and
Latin, and was a noted historian on Greece. You may be scratching your head at
this point, asking, “Lincoln?” No, not Lincoln. The keynote speaker for that
day was Edward Everett. Everyone was expecting to be dazzled by the man’s
brilliance, and they were. The climax to Everett’s career as an orator was the
opportunity to speak at an event where the recent dead in battle were
memorialized. He was invited to give this speech more than two months earlier,
while President Lincoln, not to be the main speaker, was given 17 days’ notice.
Everett did dazzle the audience,
speaking for two hours without notes. His oratory was not lost on President
Lincoln who at the end of Everett’s speech, “shook
his hand with great fervor, and said, ‘I am more than gratified. I am grateful
to you.’ Then Lincoln stood up, spoke his 272 words, and sat down.” After
returning to the White House Lincoln wrote a gracious letter to Mr. Everett
pointing out particulars in the speech which he found especially uplifting.
Edward Everett, on the other hand, wrote a note to the President which reads, “I should be glad, if I could flatter
myself, that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours,
as you did in two minutes.”
Time and space does not allow me to
write the entirety of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. However, I should like to
break it down for you in my own reflective way. In the first of three
paragraphs which starts out, “Four score
and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent . . .”
Lincoln, in one elongated sentence, gives us the reason why our nation, the
United States of America, was formed. This new nation was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.” Though it has taken a while to see this equality emerge
(and we’re still working to that end), he was a visionary, seeing what needed,
nay, what must take place for a nation to truly be free.
The second paragraph is a cryptic
analysis of the state of the nation on November 19, 1863. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” He made a
holy dedication over a portion of the former field of battle, “as a final resting place for those who gave
their lives that that nation might live.” Remember: the outcome of the War
was gravely in doubt at this juncture.
In humility, Lincoln states
eloquently that any efforts on the part of those assembled can never begin to
give these men their proper due. Rather, “the
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above
our poor power to add or detract.” Perhaps one of the classic ironies of
history is Lincoln’s next statement. “The
world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here.” The Civil War is the most popular topic in
America! We the People have taken note and remembered what was said, and we
will never forget what was done on that sacred ground!
Lincoln
concludes this third paragraph with these challenging words to those who would
heed them: “That we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” For Lincoln it
was always about freedom for all Americans.
Ronald
C. White, Jr., wrote a biography entitled, “A.
Lincoln.” He points out that Abe Lincoln came from a very strong, devout Christian
family. From childhood on, young Abe “did
not simply read the Bible, he began a lifelong practice of memorizing whole
sections. One of his favorite portions to memorize was the Psalms.” White further
writes, “The books young Lincoln read
tell us he was drawn to morality tales of the triumph of good over evil. Above
all, what tied his books together was the possibility that ordinary people
could do extraordinary things.” It is this environment that laid the
foundation for his ultimate triumph in life: the abolition of slavery.
Wow!
This man from the heartland of America was truly an ordinary man who, indeed, accomplished
extraordinary things. This is why I have my young grandchildren memorizing
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 27, we
read, “All things are possible with God.”
I
believe Mr. Lincoln would say “Amen!”
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