(Horrible example #1: Who made you? God made me. Not a tough one. #2: Why did God make you? For the life of me, I can't remember that answer, as profound as it can be if one stops to consider it. My memories end then and there; I just remember that that was the second question. There were, I think, more than 200 of these Q-and-A pronouncements which have floated into the universe and have gone past the solar system by now, headed toward the same eternity that we were supposed to have deeply pondered with the assistance from answers to questions we never remembered.)
So it was with the same attitude as Simon and Garfunkel sang about while doing another token, patriotic, non-analyzed, daily act in grade school in the song "My Little Town"--while I pledged allegiance to the wall--that so many of us memorized the Gettysburg Address. We did it one line at a time, flipping back and forth between sides of a page in a book, so that we could either pass a test or stand in front of everyone else and recite one of the great speeches of all time, anywhere, not to mention for this country at that crucial moment. As an educational practice, it was dumb, dumb, dumb, right up there with "I before e, except after c, unless rhyming with a as in neighbor and weigh," not bothering to say which "weigh" it was, because "way" sounded exactly the same without needing to deal with the rest.
The great thing about Lincoln's beloved speech was that it took about 280 words, which by itself is a marvel to study; i.e. his economy with the language with which to encapsulate great ideas. The lousy thing about it was that we never discussed what it meant, never took the time to break it down. (Did you?)
Some phrases remain in our forefront: "Of the people, by the people, for the people," and the opening phrase, "Fourscore and seven years ago," which still makes people scramble to figure out how long that would be, then doing the math and coming back out with 1776; works every time as long as you remember the year of the speech itself (which, in context, matters a great deal). Both those phrases have been abused and mangled so often that, of course, we've forgotten to what larger concepts Lincoln attached them.
I challenge you, right here and now, to recall any other significant phrases from that speech. Don't look below.
Yeah, I know. Ain't easy. Made you look. But the speech is filled with memorable phrases.
Yesterday, a group of interested latter-day students, including Yours Truly, were invited to discuss the meaning of the Gettysburg Address as kind of a potential lead-in to larger discussions as sponsored by the University of Chicago. This conversation was free; others, dealing with for instance Greek philosophy, would take several weeks and would cost more than a couple of bucks. But the idea was, and is, that if you put a bunch of genuinely interested people in a chatroom or a real one (you can do it either way), then immersed them into something they thought they knew a little about, they'd probably come away knowing a great deal more.
So we did. And I did, too. Once I got going--I didn't sit on the sidelines--I made my contributions drawing from my teachings and readings, which, if I do say so myself, aren't inconsequential. But the discussion leader pivoted upon both my and others' commentaries and blended them to create kind of a cornucopia of concepts, with Lincoln's brilliance never far from the center.
To look at it from one direction, Lincoln's speech is in fact an eloquent summary:
- Here's how we started as a country ("conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition [not necessarily one we've completely lived by] that all men are created equal");
- Here's where we are (in the middle of a civil war and commemorating one of its great battlefields, trying to figure out whether this kind of nation will go on for much longer); and
- Here's where we need to go (to "highly resolve" that the dead won't have died in vain; that we can and must engage in a renewal so our kind of government [see above] won't "perish from the earth").
I commented that it was a statement of humility and ultimate irony. After all, he also said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here...." This, of course, refers to words that transcend centuries. His purpose was to compare it to the ultimate sacrifice the soldiers had made. That was what needed to be remembered first and foremost.
The facilitator also made it a point to remark that Lincoln never differentiated which side lost soldiers and how many so as to refrain from a comparison of value. Each side's men died fighting for things they believed in. He was certainly savvy enough to understand that, had he even hinted at some qualitative comparison, that might inspire even more anger and hatred on the part of the Confederacy and/or border states that had been directed to give up their slaves by his order on the first of that year, 1863.
But he also pivoted to note that no one there, on that day, could possibly do or say anything that favorably compared to the way those soldiers had already consecrated and hallowed that ground. Relative to "our poor power to add or subtract," it was already inadequate.
It was one of those statements that, taken as a whole or in parts, should have been obvious. But it was the president making those remarks, after all, and as presidents do, they can bring far more meaning and/or seriousness to occasions just by saying what they say. And, in fact, newspapers pretty much pooh-poohed the brief talk--especially compared to the glory-ridden, two-hour oration that Edward Everett made prior to it.
When the facilitator asked for concluding comments, I offered that a review of this speech only underscored the tragedy of Lincoln's assassination. "I'm sure he had a plan," I said, "But they were not to be realized." The more I've looked at the situation, too, the more I'm convinced that, next to Washington, Lincoln was the only other Indispensable Man that the nation has produced. Only a Lincoln might have been able to put the broken country back together in a kind of rehabilitating way that could have blended what had been with what must now be. Instead, we were left with one of the worst possible replacements for him, Andrew Johnson, who spurred such ferociousness of division that it caused an impeachment and bitterness that rides with us still.
Lincoln knew that we needed to "highly resolve" that a new national meaning had to be gleaned from the horrors of war, so that all that death could give us a way onward. With deep irony, it took ninety years to show that he hadn't died in vain, either. We needed to go through the Black Codes, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Klan, Jim Crow and the Great Migration to get to Brown v. the Board and the civil rights movement--then to return to this point in which a president is an avowed racist and sets off reactions that harken back to those decrepit days. Things get better if we attend to them, but never quickly nor with the kind of definitiveness that displays clear answers. The world never works like that.
Odd that it closely compares to the predicament we're in right this very minute, when 45 will likely be impeached next week, bringing with it much the same depth of anger and bitterness. It may not seem on the surface that we are risking the possibility that this nation, such as it is, might dissolve but remember: We are not on the other side of this mess yet. We do not know how people in and out of Congress will react to the reality of trial and probable acquittal. We don't know if we'll even feel like speaking to each other again, after the issue is laid raw and bleeding on the Senate floor, seemingly to no real resolution. With that still at stake, we do not know what kinds of passions will be unleashed during the upcoming set of campaigns.
Lincoln knew that had to be addressed when the war ended, too. Someone robbed him of that chance. In a sense, we miss him still. We have no Lincoln to help us through this conflicted time. We could sure use one. My thanks to the University of Chicago for the reminder.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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