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

Reader: Susanne Brooks

     The objective that I will consider is the third as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture such as equality.

     Objective 3: To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (new historicism), such as equality; race, gender, class; the family; modernization and tradition; the individual and the community; nature or land; the writer's conflicted presence in an anti-intellectual society.

     Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin.  His formal education consisted of perhaps 18 months of schooling from traveling teachers. In effect, he was self-educated, studying every book he could borrow. An American hero, Lincoln is the self-made man. He read law on his own, won local elections, gained the Illinois bar and election to the House.

     Despite his meager education and “backwoods” upbringing, Lincoln was more successful in giving the war meaning to Northern civilians through his oratorical skills. In these speeches, Lincoln expressed better than any of his contemporaries the reasoning behind the Union effort.

Gettysburg Address p. 2078

                                   - short and to the point: plain-spokenness + richness

-          equality to all of its citizens – idealism – soldiers did not die in vain

-          He addresses common people

-          Uplifting the Union                    

     Lincoln possessed an extraordinary command of the English language, as shown by the Gettysburg Address speech dedicating a cemetery of Union soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg that he delivered on November 19, 1863. While the featured speaker, orator Edward Everett, spoke for two hours, Lincoln's few choice words resonated across the nation and across history, defying Lincoln's own prediction that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." (2079)

     Lincoln's summarized the war in ten sentences while, rededicating the nation to the war effort and to the ideal that no soldier at Gettysburg had died in vain.

     p. 2079 - "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."

     Lincoln redefines the Civil War as a struggle not just for the Union, but as “a new birth of freedom” that would bring true equality to all of its citizens.

Question:  What I find interesting is that Lincoln uses “nation” five times in the address.  When considering his audience, Northerners, by using “nation” instead “Union” what does Lincoln accomplish?

     Throughout the address he does not condemn the South.  “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here”, Lincoln could have been talking about confederate soldiers as well.  He still maintains his purpose from the start; to preserve the Union.  However, if he used “Union” in the address, then the South would seem to be excluded. 

Second Inaugural Address p. 2079

Lincoln, through this address reaches to unify the nation as victory for the Union Army was within view. 

Device: parallelism

     p. 2079 – “All dreaded it-all sought to avert it.  …devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents…seeking to destroy it without war…by negotiation.”

    p. 2079 – “Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained.”

                    “Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease …”

    p. 2080 – “Each looked for an easier triumph…”

    p. 2080 – “Both read the Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.”

Device: references to the Bible

    p. 2080 – “…but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” Matt. 7:1

    p. 2080 – “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” Matt. 17.7

    The war that had already lasted 4 years, he believed, was nothing short of God’s own punishment for the sins of human slavery. And with the war not quite over, he offered this terrible statement:

    p. 2080 – “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.” Psalms 9:9

    Finally, in the speech’s closing, with the enduring words of reconciliation and healing that are carved in the walls of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital, he set the tone for his plan for the nation’s Reconstruction.

    p. 2080 – “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Question: By using reference to the bible, what does Lincoln accomplish?

     Lincoln is the moral leader.  I consider referencing the bible as “romantic” in which Lincoln, morally, rises above it all; rising above bitterness of war and raw feelings of revenge. 

Summary

     Lincoln unifies the nation through these two speeches.  He speaks plainly and to the point while offering the ideal of equality to all its citizens.  He does not condemn the South and uses the Bible to add morality toward the unification process.