Posts
I wanted to highlight the Abraham Lincoln quotes now residing in the quote box. Lincoln is an almost bottomless source of wonderful quotes - and he even said a lot of them! Few have equaled and none have yet surpassed Lincoln's use of language as a moral political tool.
Every time I re-read the Gettysburg Address I understand more and more why we were required to learn it in school. No highlighting the good parts - read it whole.
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863 (commemorating the events of July 1-3, 1863)
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.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- 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.
Suggested reading:
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (Simon & Schuster Lincoln Library) by Garry Wills
Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage) by Douglas L. Wilson
Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution by James M. McPherson
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Friday, July 04, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Declaration of Indepence is a good read too.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very good read, but....The first two paragraphs of the Declaration sing; the list of grievances against the king is not the stuff of inspiration.
ReplyDeleteThere are no extraneous words in the Gettysburg Address nor is any part of its meaning lost to us, unlike for example, the Declaration's grievance that the king "called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records".
The victories at Vicksburg on the 4th of July, 1863 and Gettysburg the day before set the Civil War on a nearly irrervsible course to Union victory - and its preservation and transformation.
The poets of warrior culture all sermonize on the 'death before dishonor' cult of Homer's Achilles, even as ignorant lads(and now lasses) tatoo it on their limbs. The union, the nation, are successors to the 'third kingdom' which Hitler tried to reveal as the promise for aryan peoples. The words roll off the tongue of school children, memorized to satisfy the dream of exceptionalism of an older generation. And the dead are raised up in political rant, resurrected by the gods of war.
ReplyDeleteAnd the slaves were freed to suffer in the salvation of free markets, bought and sold for another hundred years as votes for an electoral college.
To bad the schools don't teach how to read such speeches as the rhetoric of scoundrels. Or as Howard Zinn might read it as a 'peoples history' of states that remain disunited.
Ah, patriotism! at least for one day.
Lincoln's speech hails liberty, equality and republican (small 'r') government. The war was fought to preserve the union and resulted in freeing the slaves and preserving republican forms of government.
ReplyDeleteLincoln was a politician in every sense of that word, but he did aspire to higher principles than most. Our aspirations are perhaps our most important attribute - as long as we take them seriously and attempt to progress toward them.
I was born and schooled in Missouriku where Mr. Lincoln was considered a railroad lawyer, for hire by northern industrialists. The war between the states was called the war of northern aggression and where slavery was a big industry, especially in Rhode Island, home of the largest port for slavers in the colonies.
ReplyDeleteThe was a term used by northerners to save the cotton markets needed by the mills.
The schools teach the myth of the victors, emancipation, etc.
The ancestors of the slaves know the story of reconstruction and its continuance until the civil rights movements of much later.
Your story is told differently by 'other' patriots.ref
So, Doug Nationalism and flag waving is great if it is America and about land our forefathers rolled-up during various wars....
ReplyDeleteThere are many Mexicans who believe that the sw is still theirs and always should be that it was lines drawn on a map by rich men fighting wars.....
You know like your recent comments about Iraq and Iran.
So I can't criticize the Iraq war while also praising the Gettysburg Address? And we aren't fighting a war in Iran - yet, at least not openly.
ReplyDeleteThe Gettysburg Address was about the Civil War and the preservation of republican government.
Lincoln opposed the Mexican War and for good reason. It was a war of aggression, like Iraq, and the disputes over the lands taken in that war were a major cause of the Civil War.
do not get me wrong....you can and have and will continue to do so..
ReplyDeleteI just find it interesting that you belittle nation building and nationalism in the areas of the middle east...which I agree was a mistake...but then if you think about it...........................
that is what our country and forefathers built this country on....
The Mexican American War is not the only example.
Spanish American War is another good example....The French Indian Wars....The War against the Sioux in the plains after the Civil War...nearly going to war to acquire the state of Washington with Britain.
yes, Lincoln sings most good writers and speakers are able to sing when they speak or write.
(They all like triplets?)
I do love our country. Yet, do you think Jefferson would have approved of the large factories of the North and where we are at today (two party system that is controlled by the major corporations of the country)?
I doubt it..he would be more likely trying to figure out how to raise chickens in Monona, riding a Kayak with you, and writing a blog?
""The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of [their] war [for independence, a nation begins] going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of [that] war will remain on [them] long, will be made heavier and heavier, till [their] rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion"
ReplyDeleteJefferson.