Reading Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address | A Primary Source Close Read w/ BRI

0:04 Hello, and welcome to another Close Reading at the Bill of Rights Institute. I’m Kirk Higgins, and I’m joined this week by my colleague Tony Williams. Kirk, how are you? I’m doing well, Tony. I’m doing well. And I’m excited today because we get to look at two well, I guess we’re looking at one here at the start, one of the most, I think, iconic or memorable speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address.

0:30 And I’m really excited to kind of dig into it because it’s a short speech. I think it’s one that many of us have read and heard, but one that I think is fruitful every time you kind of take it, take some time to go line by line and really look at what Abraham Lincoln was saying in November of 1863. Right. I think it’s about 272 words or so,

0:52 and it only took about two minutes for him to deliver it. But, yeah, it’s really a document, a speech, words that really echo through the ages. Yeah. And I want to get to that, and I hope we do talk about why it is so remember what it is about this speech that just sticks into the minds of so many Americans.

1:16 And I hope we’ll get to that, but I think our discussion will lead us there. So I think I’ll go ahead and kick us off and get right to the document. Let me just go through the technical formalities here of sharing my screen. And there we go.

1:37 So the speech was given on November 19, 1863. So, Tony, maybe you can give us just a little bit of background of how we get here. What happened in 1863? Why is Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg? And why are we waiting until November to give this speech? Right. Well, yeah, in a nutshell.

1:59 So maybe we’ll back it up maybe roughly a year or so after the Battle of Antietam, which was a horrifically bloody battle, but one that forced Robert E. Lee to retreat out of Northern Territory back to the South.

2:22 Lincoln had the victory he needed to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves, of course, in the Confederacy, but not everywhere, on the border states specifically. And by January 1, in fact, he issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves.

2:45 And this is just an incredibly important moment in American history, in the Civil War, in the history of freedom for African Americans, and Lincoln thereby achieves his goal not only of working to save the Union, but also ending this moral blight of slavery from the country.

3:07 But the war continued. Of course, we have several important battles, but most notably, I want to mention, in the summer of 1863, right around Independence Day in early July, the Battles of Gettysburg, in which I think that the casualties on both sides numbered some 50,000.

3:30 So just a very important battle, but again, a very costly one. And the lesser-known Union victory and ending the siege at Vicksburg and thereby the Union getting full control over the Mississippi River. So there are some really important

3:51 battles, and, of course, there was a cemetery being dedicated at Gettysburg. And Lincoln uses that opportunity to speak very eloquently and really reflect with the American people on the meaning of that war.

4:12 The war is certainly not over. It will continue for another couple of years. But he takes that moment to reflect, and we’ll obviously talk about more about what his purposes were. Yeah. And I think that moment is really powerful. It’s almost this poetic moment. If you were going to write a story about the culminating moment of a war, it comes with victories for the Union

4:35 in the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Vicksburg, and both coming right before the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. It’s this culminating moment. And I think when I read this seems to be the thing that captured Lincoln’s imagination, too, that in all of this horror and suffering happening on behalf of the noblest cause

4:59 or could be of defending the Union and freeing African Americans from enslavement, you have these two profound victories. And it seems that kind of was inspiring Lincoln when he was writing these words, that that moment was something he wanted to capture, right?

5:20 I really think so. I mean, you think about Lincoln going to this battlefield, great cost on both sides, all Americans, and it really gives him I think he uses it to see a noble purpose in all this horror and all this death and to really reflect on the core essence of what the war was

5:49 about and really, even more fundamentally, what the American experiment is about. And I think he’s one of our nation’s greatest poets and wordsmiths. And so he does reflect very eloquently, very beautifully on not only the war

6:09 and the sacrifice of the soldiers, but also on the American purpose. Yeah. So it begins with this poetic line, as you were saying, Lincoln as the poet. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation. That four score and seven years is sort of a flourish, but it sort of had some intentionality to it, too.

6:33 I think it sort of sets the tone for the speech in a way. You could have said 80 odd years ago or whatever, but that wouldn’t quite have fit with the motif you’re kind of going for. Right. Well, using certainly barring from the language of the King James Bible, which infused the 19th century and certainly infused Lincoln’s own use

6:58 of language, it’s not only that poetic kind of device and much more beautiful than just saying 87 years ago. But notice what he’s referring back to, right? It’s that what Lincoln calls the electric cord of the Declaration of Independence, right.

7:19 Appealing back to that founding document that really animates the American soul. Right. He doesn’t refer just to the Constitution. He refers to the Declaration, but Lincoln will elsewhere call a few years before this the apple of gold and the constitution of the frame of silver around it.

7:41 It’s really the animating ideals of the American experiment. Right. Because in referring to the Declaration, he’s referring to liberty for all, of the universal principle of the equality of all and their natural rights, of the idea of popular consensual self government.

8:03 And so all that is really embodied in the Declaration. And that’s what Lincoln sees, is creating a new nation, because we’re a nation built on an idea, built on a set of ideals rather than just blood and soil. And so for him, there’s so much packed into those key words in that opening that really reveal

8:30 the American regime, the purpose of America as a set of ideals. Yeah. And I think it’s worth reflecting, too, that Edward Everett, who is a very famous order of the day, just before Lincoln gave the speech, had just spent 2 hours, I think it was, giving the detailed history of the war up until this moment.

8:51 And here Lincoln really wanting to focus in on meaning and not on the history or the events, does basically whatever it did in 2 hours in half a sentence. Yeah exactly. What took 2 hours took Lincoln two minutes. Yes. Which I think is really powerful.

9:11 And I also think it’s interesting, too, that Lincoln avows throughout the conflict that he’s fighting to save the union. That’s a union created by the Constitution of the United States. So you would think maybe he would think back to the founding being the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. But really, for Lincoln, I think the union was embodying those

9:31 ideals of the Declaration in that the war that was being fought was in order to preserve a true understanding of what that self-evident proposition was, which is what he goes on to say in this next sentence. Right. Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And it’s interesting that he says proposition. Right.

9:52 And I wonder if we could explore that a little bit, because I think it’s a word that maybe we glance over, but I think it’s a powerful one. It’s not dedicated to the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, but instead to the proposition. And the proposition being a sort of a reasoned position in the debate. It is a question that you might throw out

10:12 to be contested with, and it’s interesting that he uses that here. Yeah, I know. I think you’re absolutely right. And Lincoln doesn’t use his language carelessly. Right. Every word is chosen carefully. I think he does understand liberty and the equality principle of all people,

10:35 African Americans as well as all people, a universal principle. But he does shade the meaning a little bit. Right. He goes from Jefferson and the continental congress idea of a self evident truth. Right. Self-evident meaning. Axiomatic or obvious to people with reason.

10:56 It’s obvious to all humans. Right. That is the self-evident truth, that all men are created equal. For Lincoln, it becomes a proposition. Why? Because, as you say, it’s contested, right. Many Southerners and people like John Calhoun, Roger Tawney,

11:16 Stephen Douglas, they questioned whether African Americans were in fact equal to whites, and the whole war was fought over this. And so it becomes a contested idea. Now, I still think that Lincoln believes it’s a self-evident truth, and he still believes in the universality and the truth of those ideals,

11:42 of those self evident truths, and yet he acknowledges that it’s being contested. So for him, it becomes a proposition, even if this bill remains true. Yeah. So we go from this really abstract first paragraph, and then he gets a little bit more focused, right? So now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any

12:03 nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. This paragraph really struck me when I was rereading it, because he’s essentially

12:26 highlighting that we’re testing that nation, right? We’re testing if democracy works, because, as you were mentioning, those Southerners, the south, broke away from the north on this idea of slavery. And we’ll explore this a little bit more when we talk about Lincoln second inaugural address, but really because the slave power, as it was referred to these Southern

12:49 senators and congressmen who were so dedicated to the protection of that thing, refused to acknowledge the national government’s ability to resolve that question and refuse to talk about, famously, with the gag rule, they literally refused to debate it in the houses of Congress. And so it’s almost as if he’s pointing to these men who have given their lives

13:10 on behalf of this idea that men are created equal, and that in doing so, it is showing that this is a cause worth doing that for. That what they’re fighting for, is this ideal in going contrary to those who are rejecting it. And he’s painting the south as being those

13:31 who are rejecting it, rejecting this idea of equality, rejecting this idea of democracy and self government, and rejecting all those ideals that are bound up in the Declaration, right? As you say, they sacrifice himself for some larger purpose, for some larger cause. And he enumerates that cause right in that first sentence.

13:53 And it’s really that appeal to American exceptionalism and saying, look, we’re here for Republican self-governments. We’re here for consent and equality and freedom and nations who conceived. We don’t know if it’s going to last. Right. It’s being contested by the Confederacy.

14:15 It’s being contested in this great civil war. And the Outcome Of The War Is Not Guaranteed At This Point. I Think Lincoln Is Acknowledging That and Really Saying, look, This May Lead To The Ultimate Doom Of The American Experiment. We May Split Off Into Separate Governments In Separate Countries,

14:38 and It Will Be A Test For Self Government Itself. Right. And The History Of Republics Shows That Generally they Didn’t Last Very Long, and There Weren’t Very Many Of Them In History. He’s Sharing The Founders. Basic pessimism that humans weren’t meant to govern themselves,

14:59 that we’re just not sure if this government is going to long endure. And then there’s some other interesting things going on here, right. Just in the first paragraph he’s in the past and now he’s in the present, right? And later on in the speech it’ll be in the future. So there’s an interesting use of time

15:20 in this, also an interesting use of space and place. Here we start off with the sort of continent and then we get down intonation and battlefield as well. So there’s a lot of interesting things as you start to sort of unpack this speech, all in a very brief speech.

15:42 It’s really amazing. Yeah, it really is. And I think here in these next few lines that really comes forward and one word you use when we’re talking about this before we came on was pathos, right? And sort of this rhetorical first.

16:03 And many of the things you’re talking about are rhetoric and I wonder if you could just say a word or two about rhetoric generally but pathos specifically and what that might mean, particularly in this instance, right? Rhetoric is really important in a popular government, in our democratic system,

16:26 leaders, even fellow citizens, we need to persuade each other, right? We don’t do so through force, we don’t do so through violence. We persuade each other to adopt certain positions and certain policies and certain laws.

16:46 This mastery of rhetoric and even its use is extremely important and Lincoln is just so good at it. And the rhetorical devices he uses are also really important in shaping his speech.

17:08 You see these kind of the use of triplicates we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hollow and repeating a lot of alliteration and repeating certain phrases like we cannot consecrate, but they have consecrated it. Right? We cannot dedicate, but they have dedicated and we are

17:32 dedicated to the great task remaining so that repetition is very, very important and we can continue to talk more about the various devices he uses. But it was back when people were classically educated and they had the Columbian orator like Frederick Douglas learn to read from that they were very interested

17:58 in oratory and rhetoric because they understood that these academic disciplines were really important in a republic, right? Yeah. And especially having that echo back, it’s not known, I don’t think, whether or not Lincoln was thinking

18:19 of Pericles funeral oration that was given by Pericles in the Peloponnesian Wars and has been famously passed down. But it certainly echoes of that, right? It echoes of this sentiment that Pericles has similar themes saying that when you are dedicating yourself to something higher or when those who have died or dedicated themselves to something higher,

18:41 something is happening there’s something that happens to that cause. There’s something that’s happening here when it’s a just and right cause that is being fought for. And I think that’s why it’s interesting, this first triplicate. We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hollow this ground. Consecrate is a really interesting word that Lincoln employs there because it does

19:01 have this almost religious reverence kind of a feeling. Earlier, we had referenced the King James Bible, but it’s almost like and I wouldn’t say that Lincoln is advocating for a civic religion here, but it’s certainly something that he wants to call upon the highest possible thing he can in order to orient what it is that’s taking place

19:26 here, in order to convey to his audience, I think, the importance of not only this moment, but of this battle and of this war more broadly. And it seems that at that moment is really where he’s saying, look, this is a cause worth advancing and one that has been advanced up until this

19:48 moment, and it’s now on us to continue to advance that cause. Right. No, I definitely think so. I think that he really I mean, just the words he said beautifully honors those who have fallen. As you said, there’s work to be done. Right.

20:11 He talks about a great task. They’ve so far nobly advanced it by giving the last full measure of their devotion. I mean, very beautiful. But to honor the dead, we need to also be devoted to that cause that they gave their lives for. We need to continue to be devoted to it.

20:32 And, of course, that cause is self-government. It’s universal principles. It’s equality for all human beings, for all Americans. It’s the freedom to live their lives as they wish and to keep the fruits of their labor.

20:53 All these core principles must be true for all Americans, for whites as well as African Americans, for all these free people. And he says that at the end, right. That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. Kind of referring

21:13 to the Emancipation Proclamation and saying that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Right. So there’s a noble purpose that Lincoln is alluding to by honoring the Warded.

21:34 Yeah, I think there’s a couple of really powerful things you touched on. One is that unfinished work, and the other is the overall sense of humility that Lincoln exudes here and that the work the work to be done is humble. I mean, you can imagine it’s always dangerous doing counterfactuals in history, but you can imagine another kind of leader coming in and talking about how great this victory was and how amazing it was that our armed forces came together

22:00 and defeated those horrible Confederates and that this victory, in some measure, was mine because I am the leader of this nation who finally found a need to be the head of this army and got these soldiers recruited. And yet he doesn’t do any of that. In fact, he barely talks about the victory at all. He talks about the sacrifice he talks about

22:24 what they may have died for trying to give purpose to this chaos, but he’s certainly not glorifying that action in any way. He’s not saying they’re great and valiant deeds of unmatched courage and patriotism. No, it’s none of that. It’s very much that they have done this work.

22:47 And he said, the world will little no longer remember what we say here, but I can never forget what they did here. I think it’s sort of a powerful pointing to that, and that what we can do in order to remember them is to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work that they who fought here. So nobly advanced is for us rather to dedicate to the great task remaining

23:07 before us that from these honor dead we take increased devotion to that cost which they gave the last full measure of devotion. I think it’s a really powerful thing because a difficult thing for a leader to do. Right. Because this is on the eve of an election year, right.

23:28 A highly contested election year, when there are still voices within the government who don’t want Lincoln to be president, who don’t appreciate the way that he’s conducted the war, many who wanted to end the war outright. And instead of taking a victory lap, he is saying that the only thing that we can do is to dedicate ourselves to continue to advance this noble cause for which this war was fought.

23:51 I think that’s a really profound thing. Yeah, I totally agree. And as you point out, and to come back to your earlier point that I don’t think I really addressed that there’s a pathoge here. Right. There the feelings of the speech, the emotions that it appeals to, very, very touching.

24:14 Right. And there’s sadness. Right. There’s melancholy in the loss here. You’re right. He doesn’t use it to trumpet his own greatness or to trumpet the Union, even, or to say, we drove them out of the north and we’re going to drive to Richmond.

24:37 He doesn’t say that. Right. Because there’s an ethos here. Right. What is the set of beliefs? Well, it’s National Union. It’s all those principles we’ve talked about throughout our discussion here. And Lincoln believes that they are true for all Americans, for those in the north

25:00 and south, for those who are white and those who are black. It’s a universality of this within the National Union. But he has a very strong sense of humility in talking about and trying to achieve that noble purpose that we talked about.

25:26 Yeah, I think that’s really powerful. And again, that unfinished work, too, I think, is really powerful in that as well. The war was still to be fought, and not only was the war to be fought, but the war is but one fight in this work towards achieving the equality that this contest is being tested on. And it goes back to that first paragraph

25:48 of him talking about this nation based on a proposition. And that proposition is and always will be tested. And so, in a sense, that work is unfinished and will be unfinished because it is for all of us to continue that work, to ensure that that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish.

26:10 I think that’s a really profound thing, again, that he could have said, the tide has turned and we’re on our way to Richmond, and he doesn’t. And not only is it not about the conflict again, but it’s about something much larger than just this civil war. Right. And that unfinished work, as you’re pointing out, is not going to be accomplished just by the war.

26:34 It’s going to be accomplished by a dedication, and it’s going to continue in peace. Right. Dedication to those principles in peace. Because don’t forget, I mean, the 13th Amendment is not yet passed. Certainly the idea of equal civil rights and equal voting rights, I mean,

26:55 all that will be part of this unfinished work and economic equality and so forth. And Lincoln knows it’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to be hard work. And in fact, with the hindsight of history, we know that in some ways, it continues to be unfinished.

27:18 And that struggle certainly even outlasted Reconstruction and well into the 20th century and even through today. So it’s a call to his fellow countrymen at the time, but really, it’s one that should echo through

27:40 the ages, even to our own time and maybe beyond, because we constantly need to be vigilant and ensure that these principles truly do apply to all people. Yeah, and I’ll throw out my own thoughts on at the beginning, we talked about why this speech in particular is so remembered,

28:02 and I think that’s partly why I think it gets at that same power that the simplicity of the Declaration of Independence has a self evident truth that all men are created equal. Right. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address seems to have that same ability to enrapt your attention and draw so closely to the heart

28:23 of the thing that is at stake, in the heart of the thing that the United States was established to test and to advance. Right. And I think that is the power behind the speech, I think. But we’d love to hear from all of our viewers, too, and know what you think may be the reason why this speech has become

28:45 so much a part of the American civic memory. There’s some great simplicity here. He’s using simple words, readily understood words, but they are complex when you start digging deeper, and they have a humble and noble tone to them,

29:06 and certainly a very important and noble purpose underlying. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Tony, for walking through the Gettysburg Address with me. I’ve really enjoyed it. Like I said, it’s one of those that the more you come back to it, the more you find in it. And I think next time we get together, we’ll be talking about another speech

29:29 by Abraham Lincoln, his second inaugural address. So I’ll look forward to that. Great. All right, well, thank you all so much for joining us. And thank you, Tony. And we’ll see you next time.