GettysBlog

Lincoln and Ithaca

Students participating in the Ithaca High School Combined Class Read this year are reading Garry Wills' book, Lincoln at Gettysburg. They are studying the Greek roots of Lincoln's oration and the influence of the Ancient Greeks upon American culture (e.g. Greek Revival architecture). They are also examining presidential politics in this election year.

On Friday, October 17th they visit the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Goldwin Smith Hall, and the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library, where they will view and discuss a selection of Lincoln and Greek materials in the Cornell collections, including the Bancroft Copy of the Gettysburg Address and a newly acquired copy of the first English language edition of Thucydides published in 1550.

A digital Lincoln at Gettysburg: Ithaca High School guide of their Library tour will allow the IHS students to return to campus virtually and learn more about the books, documents, and art objects they saw during their visit.

Pictured here is a wooden parade ax used by supporters of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential campaign.

Below is an image of a 1913 postcard of Goldwin Smith Hall.

The Words That Remake America

We have read and discussed Lincoln's words at the various Reading Project events.  We have noted and appreciated his rhetoric and phrasing:  "all men are created equal," "new birth of freedom," and "government of the people, by the people, for the people."  But we have not mentioned the words that have the potential to truly remake America: apathy, indifference, ignorance, and intolerance.

As the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words.

Was it apathy then that kept more students from coming to hear Garry Wills' talk last night? Was it indifference that motivated so many students to leave Barton Hall before the group discussion was over a few weeks ago?  Yes, it was hot in there, but why were these students so uninterested in this discussion?  Especially in an historic election year when these topics and Lincoln's words have resonated in our daily news headlines.

Democracy is participatory. In order to function properly it requires an informed citizenry to educate itself about the issues and problems it faces, and to act on those issues.

Democracy is a privilege, just as a Cornell education is a privilege. Both require you to think.  Both require some effort and hard work.

As we finish with our daily postings to this blog, I hope that our readers will keep Lincoln in mind. Next year we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth and Cornell will be celebrating his life and accomplishments with a major exhibition in Kroch Library.

I have enjoyed discussing Lincoln with you all. Keep reading. Stay curious. Know better.

[Flickr image of Mount Rushmore by lmbaker3.]

Garry Wills at Cornell

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 150 Years Later
September 17, 2008 - 7:00PM to 8:00PM
Garry Wills, historian and author of Lincoln at Gettysburg will be speaking on the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

LOCATION: Statler Auditorium
SPEAKER: Garry Wills
ADMISSION: Open to Public, Alumni, Students, Faculty, and Staff.
ADMISSION INFO: Free, but tickets are required. Tickets may be picked up at the Willard Straight Ticket Office beginning Sept. 11.

Sponsored by University Lectures Committee and the Office of the Provost.

For those of you wanting to read more of Garry Wills' writing, here are a few recent New York Times Op Ed pieces and his essays from the New York Review of Books:

McCain's McGovern Moment, September 3, 2008                                                         

Two Presidents Are Worse Than One, January 26, 2008

Garry Wills at The New York Review of Books

Come hear about the most famous debates in American political history.

In the News

I wanted to share two recent news items with our Lincoln at Gettysburg readers.

Did you hear that President Bush visited Gettysburg last week? He and a small entourage that included former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former White House political adviser Karl Rove, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, and Karen Hughes, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs for the State Department were given a tour of the battlefield by Gabor Boritt, author of The Gettysburg Gospel and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Their tour began at the Virginia Memorial, one of over 1,300 monuments at the Gettysburg National Military Park, and included a visit to the park's new Museum and Visitor Center.

Here in Ithaca, Cornell Professor Ross Brann, posted some comments about the New Student Reading Project in his Cornell Daily Sun blog, which were then reprinted in the Chronicle Online. He asks us: What are we doing here at Cornell? I don't believe that is a rhetorical question. Would any of you like to comment on his observations?

And there you have it. Presidents visiting battlefields. Professors setting challenges for their students. All of us settling into our fall semester schedules and routines.

[Image of the Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg is from adamr.stone's flickr site.]

Get Linc'ed at the Tatkon Center

President Skorton will kickoff Cornell's student voter registration drive tomorrow afternoon, September 6, at 4:30 p.m. at the Balch Courtyard Terrace (rain location Carol Tatkon Center Room 3330). He will read the Gettysburg Address and talk about the power of words to change our world.

Check out all of the events happening this month at the Tatkon Center.

Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, and Race

Lerone Bennett Jr., author, social historian and longtime editor of Ebony magazine, will be the featured speaker for the first Sage Wednesday event of the semester in Sage Chapel, today from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. 

He will be speaking on "Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, and Race."

Sage Wednesdays: "Not a worship service, more than a lecture, Sage Wednesdays allows for the expression of a public philosophy and public theology and consideration of the personal pursuit of meaning and purpose."  This event is free and open to the public.

Persuasive Power of Words

Anne Kenney, Cornell University's Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, sends library staff weekly messages about libraries, books, digital information, reading, and other topical issues. Like so many of us on campus, she read Lincoln at Gettysburg and joined a small group discussion on Monday. I wanted to share her message about our book with all of you:

"Last week during my annual cottage-at-the-lake vacation I thought a lot about words. Finishing up Lincoln at Gettysburg, the new student reading book by Garry Wills, and watching episodes of AMC's runaway show, Mad Men, provided grist for my thoughts. There is more similarity between these two than just my preoccupation of last week. Each focuses on the persuasive power of words. The former takes 317 pages to describe the impact of 272 words that constitute the Gettysburg Address; the latter is a series of hour-long episodes devoted to the advertising world of the late 1950s/early 1960s. Both trade in selling ideas. The subtitle to Wills' book is "The Words that Remade America" and his contention is that Lincoln wasn't in Gettysburg to commemorate a cemetery but to achieve a "revolution in thought." Similarly successful advertisers don't sell products but concepts, as exemplified in the Mad Men episode in which Don Draper, the Creative Director for Sterling Cooper Ad Agency, snags the Kodak account by describing its new carousel slide projector as a memory holder. Fourth, Lincoln's Address and advertisements alike achieve an economy of words. Lincoln broke with tradition by delivering a speech that lasted a little over 2 minutes; advertising depends on pithy slogans and 30 second pitches. Both invade our subconscious.  Many of us had to memorize the Gettysburg Address at some point in our education, and while you may not recall the full text, it's hard to forget the "Fourscore and seven years ago" bit. And advertising is meant to stick with you, as anyone who has had a jingle roll around in their head all day knows. Finally, both the Gettysburg Address and ads pack their greatest punch when they are heard, which is why the former figures prominently in solemn occasions and ad agencies spend a fortune on radio and television. Lincoln himself had a habit of reading everything aloud, including the newspaper. Consider, too, the 20th century equivalent to the Gettysburg Address: Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech, delivered to over 200,000 people 100 years after Lincoln's from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.  Its impact had as much to do with his delivery as it did with his words.

Don Draper was wrong. Kodak slide projectors aren't the real memory holders. Well-chosen, and well-spoken, words are.

Enjoy the week and the return of students to campus.
Anne"

We hope to see all of you in our libraries as the semester begins.  Good luck in your classes. Keep reading!

The power to "remake" the world?

The old adage that "the pen is mightier than the sword" may be difficult to accept as we observe all the armed conflicts around the globe at the moment.  But you don't need to believe in the superior power of the pen to consider the possibility, as Wills puts it, that words are sometimes necessary "to complete the work of the guns." Yet how is it that words get their power?  To answer this question, if Wills is right, we must delve into the origins of "linguistic might," and we should expect that the more powerful the words in question, the more complex their origins are likely to be.  Wills leads us on a dense and sometimes complicated exploration of the literary, religious, philosophical, and socio-political roots of the Gettysburg Address.  In addition, his own language occasionally requires us to pick up a dictionary.  But if we stick with him, we can come to a deeper understanding of how 272 words helped to bring to completion what the massive death and destruction of the battle of Gettysburg (and indeed the American Civil War as a whole) could not do alone.

Does the power of words have anything to do with the greatness of political leaders?  We may not think so, especially if we believe that the careers of great leaders are best defined by the decisions they make and by actions they take in light of those decisions.  But what if the full measure of some political greatness will escape us until we understand the role that language and rhetoric might play in decision and action?  Wills has been influential in making the case that this is a reasonable assumption to bring to reflection on Lincoln's career and legacy.  But over the course of his career, Wills has extended this approach to discussions of the broader importance of language and its uses in political contexts.  You may find it interesting to look at a May 2008 article entitled "Two Speeches on Race," in which Wills makes some provocative comparisons between presidential candidate Barack Obama's speech on race and one of Lincoln's speeches delivered in the months before he won the presidency.  Whatever you might make of these comparisons, it is important to ask whether Wills's views in Lincoln at Gettysburg might help us reflect on the sources, power, and value of contemporary political language in the broadest sense.

Finally, why should you be interested in Wills's discussion of the Gettysburg Address if you are either not a citizen (naturalized or native) of the United States, or if you are perhaps an American citizen who is impatient with those who fail to focus on questions of global importance?   Well, if Wills is right, the power of Lincoln's words was partly a function of his conviction that America's national purpose was rooted in ideals of equality and democracy that have value for all human beings.  Consider, too, that Lincoln's words influenced the labor movement in nineteenth century Germany and political movements in mid-twentieth century India, and they resonate in the language of twenty-first century defenders of human rights around the globe. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru kept a cast of Lincoln's hand on his desk, along with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, to remind himself to combine Gandhi's compassion with Lincoln's capacity for strength and unity.  A 2007 conference on Lincoln focused on his relevance as "A Humanitarian as Broad as the World," and an international conference to celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009 will be entitled "Lincoln Without Borders."   Might this long-standing global interest in Lincoln suggest that his words have the power not only to remake America, but to help remake the world?

During New Student Orientation, on the day before the small group discussions, three distinguished Cornell faculty members will help us understand the power of Lincoln's words:  Professor Edward Baptist of the history department will deliver a talk entitled "A Nation Not Like Any Other Nations," Cornell President Emeritus and Professor of Classics Hunter Rawlings will talk to us about "Lincoln and the Athenian Tradition of State Funeral Orations," and Professor Tad Brennan of the philosophy department will deliver a talk entitled "Any Nation So Conceived."   

This faculty panel discussion will be held from 3:30 to 5:00 on Sunday August 24, 2008 in Barton Hall.  I look forward to seeing you there and then to learning more about your approach to Lincoln in the essays you will submit during the small group discussions on Monday August 25.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education,  Michele Moody-Adams

150th Anniversary of the Lincoln Douglas Debates

On August 21, 1858 a then relatively unknown Abraham Lincoln first debated Stephen A. Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois during their campaign to become a U.S. senator. Their seven debates that summer and fall have become the gold standard for political debates. See the multimedia slideshow Debating Douglas on the National Stage, 1857-1858 (Requires RealPlayer) to learn more about their historical context and significance. 

You may recall that earlier this year Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to a Lincoln - Douglas style debate during the primary season. I wonder if the American public would have found this interesting or not, since the 1858 debates featured an hour-long presentation by the first speaker (Lincoln and Douglas alternated going first), an hour and a half response by the second candidate, and then a half hour rejoinder by the first speaker. Would you be willing and able to watch a three hour political debate? How would the second-by-second 24 hour news cycle handle this kind of marathon?

Lincoln lost this election, but gained valuable national exposure. Two years later he defeated Douglas and others to become our 16th president. It was during these debates that Lincoln started honing and perfecting the rhetorical skills that we have been reading about this summer.

Our author, Garry Wills, will be speaking about the Lincoln - Douglas Debates when he visits Cornell on September 17th. 

See you all in Barton Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Welcome to Cornell!

Image: Lincoln and Douglas, November 3, 1903. Creator: Jaspard, J. M. Image Source: Chicago Historical Society

Lincoln at Cornell, Part 2

Back on July 21st, I told you about some of Lincoln's connections with our university. As you prepare to make your way to Ithaca this week, I thought I would share a few more Lincoln - Cornell stories.

I've already told you about Ezra Cornell meeting with Lincoln the night before his inauguration, but Cornell co-founder and first president, Andrew Dickson White, also knew Lincoln. Here is a passage from White's autobiography telling of Lincoln's death:

"On the morning of April 15, 1865, coming down from my rooms in the Delavan House at Albany, I met on the stairway a very dear old friend, the late Charles Sedgwick, of Syracuse, one of the earliest and most devoted of Republicans, who had served with distinction in the House of Representatives, and had more than once been widely spoken of for the United States Senate. Coming toward me with tears in his eyes and voice, hardly able to speak, he grasped me by the hand and gasped the words, "Lincoln is murdered.''  I could hardly believe myself awake: thething seemed impossible;--too wicked, too monstrous, too cruel to be true; but alas! confirmation of the news came speedily and the Presidency was in the hands of Andrew Johnson.

Shortly afterward the body of the murdered President, borne homeward to Illinois, rested overnight in the State Capitol, and preparations were made for its reception.  I was one of the bearers chosen by the Senate and was also elected to pronounce one of the orations.  Rarely have I felt an occasion so deeply: it has been my lot during my life to be present at the funerals of various great rulers and magnates; but at none of these was so deep an
impression made upon me as by the body of Lincoln lying in the assembly chamber at Albany, quiet and peaceful at last.

Of the speeches made in the Senate on the occasion, mine being the only one which was not read or given from memory, attracted some attention, and I was asked especially for the source of a quotation which occurred in it, and which was afterward dwelt upon by some of my hearers. It was the result of a sudden remembrance of the
lines in Milton's Samson Agonistes, beginning:

     Oh, how comely it is, and how reviving
     To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
     When God into the hands of their deliverer
     Puts invincible might
     To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor,
     The brute and boisterous force of violent men,"
     (lines 1268-1280)

The funeral was conducted with dignity and solemnity. When the coffin was opened and we were allowed to take one last look at Lincoln's face, it impressed me as having the same melancholy expression which I had seen upon it when he entered the East Room at the White House.  In its quiet sadness there seemed to have been no change. There was no pomp in the surroundings; all, though dignified, was simple."

To learn more about Lincoln's funeral, please see the book, Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War. Written by Cornell professor Shirley Samuels, its Chapter 5, "Lincoln's Body" continues Garry Wills's exploration of the Culture of Death. (For those of you with active Cornell NetIDs, this book is available as an e-book.)

Which brings us to the second battle of Gettysburg. The National Park Sevice recently opened its new visitor center at Gettysburg, but the building that once served this function is in the middle of a preservation controversy. The building was designed by Richard Neutra and his business partner, Cornell architecture graduate Robert Evans Alexander, whose papers and drawings are held in the University Archives in Kroch Library.

Lincoln never visited Ithaca, but he and Gettysburg are a part of our Cornell history.