Happy birthday, Abe Lincoln
Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the sixteenth President of the United States of America – Abraham Lincoln. Variously commemorated in Washington, DC, in his memorial, at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the capital of Nebraska, an aircraft carrier and, I should think, umpteen high schools across the USA, Lincoln figures at or near the top of any list of great presidents.
His best-remembered words, for their succinct encapsulation of the situation, today are probably those of the Gettysburg Address. The famous words now inscribed upon the walls of the Lincoln Memorial are probably not quite the words he said on November 19, 1863; they are rather the words of the Bliss version. It is not quite the same as the ones he wrote shortly before and after giving the address, but they are the only ones he ever signed:
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 note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what 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.
At the time, they fell flat. Edward Everett’s two hour oration received adulatory praise, while Lincoln had some biting reviews. Our own Times said that “the ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln” while the Chicago Times said that “the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dish-watery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” The Harrisburg Patriot and Union wrote, “We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.”
The fashion at the time certainly was for long speeches and ornate, flowery lanugage. The only person there, it would seem, who ‘got it’ was Edward Everett – no fan of Lincoln - who wrote to Lincoln the following day asking for a copy of his speech, saying, evidently having learnt from Lincoln’s brevity, that “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”
While we may think of a tall, commanding figure, confident and with the oratorical prowess of a Pericles or a Churchill; now, he is used as an inspiration for anyone who claims that liberty and justice are on their side. At the time, he was often seen (and not just by the Copperheads) as a gangly, ungainly and faintly ridiculous figure with a high-pitched, Kentucky accent.
One of my favourite pieces of poetry is the very un-Whitmanesque O Captain! My Captain!.It is a fitting tribute because those attributes, positive and negative, aren’t what matters. The feelings expressed by Whitman about the loss of a leader and losses sustained through a brutal war are, I think, still true.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths–for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
From Leaves of Grass XII by Walt Whitman.
xD.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Great poem