In the clip below you will hear the Gettysburg Address read by actor Jeff Daniels. Daniels played Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in both Gettysburg (1994) and Gods and Generals (2002).
I would like to take this greatest of American speeches and parse it out a bit.
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.
- It should be noted that Lincoln and most around him understood that the beginning of our country was in 1776 (fourscore and seven years equals 87 years; therefore 1863-87=1776) with the drafting and signing of the Declaration of Independence, not 1787 with the ratifying of the Constitution. The “proposition that all men are created equal” was penned by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)—a man of enigma who, even though he held to this proposition, owned over 200 slaves. It would take a great Civil War, Reconstruction, and a century more before this proposition would turn into more of a reality.
- Keep in mind this was 1863—and the outcome of the Civil War was far from certain. Lincoln’s popularity was low, the commanding generals were (to be kind) slow (George McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, George Meade who lead them at Gettysburg), and lost significant battles during the first two years to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee took a significant gamble. He knew Lincoln’s popularity was low, and if he could come into Pennsylvania and strike a victory, Lincoln would likely be out by the next election. He banked that the North would grow tired of the war and would let the Confederacy have their independence. Lee’s (over)confidence and questionable tactics (as brilliant as Lee was) along with the overwhelming resources of the North made Gettysburg a costly defeat for both, but especially for Lee who lost seven full divisions, six generals and 1/3 of his entire army. Lincoln understood that this battle was the turning point of the war. His “few appropriate remarks” made this clear.
- Lincoln felt his words would be forgotten. But it was not his words but the keynote speaker’s: the great orator Edward Everett. He spoke for two hours (keep in mind that the American ear could and expected to endure speaking of this length. The “new birth of freedom” is an interesting phrase. The United States would be just that—united. Although the policies of Reconstruction (1867-1877) left much to be desired in what many considered a second Civil War that many are still fighting even in 2010, James Robertson notes that prior to the Civil War, people would say, “The United States are… .” After the Civil War, citizens would say, “The United States is… .” This shift in mindset is significant, and speaks volumes that reverberate even to today.
“Everywhere he went, Lincoln carried a book with him. He thumbed through page after page while his horse rested at the end of a long row of planting. Whenever he could escape work, he would like with his head against a tree and read. Though he acquired only a handful of volumes, they were seminal works of the English language. Reading the Bible and Shakespeare over and over implanted rhythms and poetry that would come to fruition in those works of his maturity that made Abraham Lincoln our only poet-president. With remarkable energy and tenacity he quarried the thoughts and ideas that he wanted to remember. ‘When he came across a passage that Struck him, ‘ his stepmother recalled, ‘he would write it down on boards if he had no paper,’ and ‘when the board would get too black he would shave it off with a drawing knife and go on again.’ Then once he obtained paper, he would rewrite it and keep it in a scrapbook so that it could be memorized. Word thus became precious to him, never, as with Seward, to be lightly or indiscriminately used.”