LITR 4232 American Renaissance UHCL class on Lincoln

Hawthorne, from Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” + “Second Inaugural Address.”

Tuesday, 11 April: Hawthorne, from Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” + “Second Inaugural Address.” (2076-

As with most political figures, not known for "big texts" or creative writing like novels and plays, but rather for brief speeches, anecdotes, aphorisms (wise sayings), or sections of political documents and memoirs

Many political leaders are also journalists, lawyers, editors, especially at times of crisis when fresh thought and analysis are required

For Lincoln in USA, compare Franklin, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt; also Winston Churchill, prime minister of England across World War 2

Jefferson: letters and statutes regarding separation of church and state ("wall" metaphor); Declaration of Independence

Churchill and Roosevelt: stirring speakers, memorable phrases, plus wrote memoirs and books of history

+ Lincoln continued to live as a literary figure in the flood of writings that immediately began and has never ended

Appeared during "Romantic era" of American literature and culture, the American Renaissance

Lincoln's rustic background, born in log cabin, worked outdoors, close to nature, manly outdoors as well as bookish indoors

Heroic individual--reading Bible and Shakespeare by firelight, writing on a shovel-back

cf. Whitman's attempt to balance Americans as "equal but individual / unique / special"

Lincoln born of "the people," speaks like the people but elevated, one of us but special

Lincoln dies early--may contribute to Romantic legend--potential rather than actuality--"what might have been" is usually more Romantic than what really turns out--

Plus mythical resonance or coincidence: Lincoln attacked on Good Friday (14 April 1865)

patterns: plain-spokenness + richness, idealism--what balance?
addressing common people, uplifting union

Bible--but, given our secular government, how does Lincoln get away with it? Compared to today, why is explicitly biblical speech acceptable?

Formal issue: Lincoln's use of parallelism; compare Whitman, plus biblical sources

But Lincoln goes further than almost any US president in using biblical citation, phrasing, and / or style in his speeches.

For "culture wars" over whether USA is "a Christian nation" or a secular government with religious people, what does Lincoln deliver?

1. Biblical Christianity is recognized and appealed to as a common interest, heritage, and source of moral lessons.

2. But different readers can come to different conclusions, which "relativizes" the truth of its morality. Cf. Melville, Hawthorne, even Whitman as tragic visionaries: truth may be glimpsed, but humans can only partly bear it.

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Alex Preminger. Princeton UP, 1975.

Parallelism [Gk. "side by side"] In poetry a state of correspondence between one phrase, line, or verse with another. Parallelism seems to be the basic aesthetic principle of poetic utterance. . . . Parallelism of clauses is the central principle of biblical verse . . . . [T]he poet who has certainly made the most use of this device in English is Walt Whitman. . . .

Abraham Lincoln, "Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 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 not, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget wheat 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.

Thursday, 13 April: Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (3013-

Whitman left or published a lot of poems, records, and journals concerning the Civil War as seen by a citizen living in Washington, which was near the center of the war (i. e., just above Virginia, southeast of Pennsylvania--lots of casualties and troops and supplies coming in and out).

Whitman's work as a practical male nurse may be the most extended and difficult humanitarian service of any great writer in world history.

Served as important permissible outlet for his otherwise risky love for men. Sometimes compared to gay community's unifying around AIDS crisis in 1980s--"gay" as more than hedonism or pleasure seeking.

Exhausted after war, Whitman suffered first of several major strokes in 1873. Continued to work until death in 1892, again showing his courage in the face of his own personal suffering.

Therefore, virtually every American family suffered a loss of a father, brother, son, cousin, uncle

States > Union (i. e., weakening of "states' rights," strengthening of federal government)

regional culture > national culture (augmented by improvements in transportation and communication, e. g. transcontinental railroad and telegraph)

rural, agricultural society > urban, industrial society (modernization under way before but accelerated by Civil War)

pre-Civil War: northern & western USA: middle-class society, opportunity for all, "age of the common man" ("people" dictate political process)

> rich and poor, "Gilded Age," "plutocracy" (robber barons & captains of industry, wealth dictates political process)

overall, shift from "liberal," open society agitating for change to an exhausted society stressed by loss and change

Long-term effect of Civil War recently being questioned. Did the South win? The South (and increasingly the Southwest) has dominated national politics, especially in the early 20th century and since the 1980s. (Pres. Clinton, VP Gore, Pres. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, Bill Frist)
>anti-federal government, states rights making comeback in federal judiciary; less public support for education; society as rich-poor rather than middle class

Romanticism (American Renaissance) 1820s-1860s > Realism (includes Naturalism & Regionalism / Local Color) 1870s-1910s

Regionalism / Local Color
Twain, Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin (Stowe as forerunner)

Romantic tendencies: expansiveness, sense of possibility, eroticism, experimentation in style and subject matter

by Walt Whitman 1 COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother—here’s a letter from thy dear son.

2 Lo, ’tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;	5
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis’d vines;
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful—and the farm prospers well.	10

3 Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father—come at the daughter’s call;
And come to the entry, mother—to the front door come, right away.

Fast as she can she hurries—something ominous—her steps trembling;
She does not tarry to smoothe her hair, nor adjust her cap.	15

Open the envelope quickly;
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d;
O a strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she catches the main words only;
Sentences broken—gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,	20
At present low, but will soon be better.

4 Ah, now, the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face, and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.	25

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs;
The little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismay’d;)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

5 Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul;)
While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already;	30
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin form, presently drest in black;
By day her meals untouch’d—then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,	35
O that she might withdraw unnoticed—silent from life, escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

2378 strangest and yet the fittest thing . . . that he, out of so many millions, unlooked for, unselected by any intelligible process

2379 the pattern American, though with a certain extravagance, which, possibly, I exaggerated still further by the delighted eagerness with which I took it in

2007 to make his life, like the books he had cherished, a story with a meaningful end

2008 to assure that the Constitution's guarantees extended as far in practice as they did in ideal

2008 platform emphasized not the problem of slavery but the preservation of the union

2008 half-measures and dubious compromises. But the union he envisioned was one in which lavery--and all artificial perpetuation of inequality among men--shouldl have no lasting place

2008 later, rhetoric of Bible, both in style and reference; cf. speeches of Abolitionists

2010 slavery: to strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest . . . restrict the territorial enlargement of it