GettysBlog

November 19, 1863

On this date 145 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered the speech that has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address.

In recent interviews, President-elect Barack Obama, has stated that one of the things that he is doing in preparation for his presidency is to reread Lincoln's writings. Let us pause on this historic anniversary and read Lincoln's 272 word speech again.

Full text of Cornell's Bancroft Copy of the Gettysburg Address.

Reading of the Gettysburg Address from Ken Burn's film, The Civil War:

We live in historic times. Let us hope that this nation shall now finally have Lincoln's "new birth of freedom."

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.

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.

Who was William Seward?

As the front runner for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination before I was selected as the party’s nominee, William H. Seward was my political rival. He was to be my Secretary of State and later my close personal friend. He helped me write my First Inaugural address (see p. 158 of our book) and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Seward also served the public as a New York state senator, a Governor of New York, and a United States Senator. He was gravely injured in an attack by one of John Wilkes Booth’s accomplices that awful night in April 1865.  He survived and continued as Secretary of State for my successor, Andrew Johnson, and in that position he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia­-then commonly mocked by the public as “Seward’s Folly.” Seward House, his home in Auburn, NY, just north of Ithaca, is now a museum.

On November 18, 1863, the night before I gave my speech at Gettysburg (see p. 31 of Lincoln at Gettysburg) Seward addressed a crowd outside the house where he was staying:

"When we part to-morrow night, let us remember that we owe it to our country and to mankind that this war shall have for its conclusion the establishing of the principle of democratic government; ­ the simple principle that whatever party, whatever portion of the community, prevails by constitutional suffrage in an election, that party is to be respected and maintained in power, until it shall give place, on another trial and another verdict, to a different portion of the people. If you do not do this, you are drifting at once and irresistibly to the very verge of universal, cheerless, and hopeless anarchy. But with that principle this government ours ­ the purest, the best, the wisest, and the happiest in the world ­ must be, and, so far as we are concerned, practically will be, immortal."

I could not have said this better myself. Actually, I did. But I do not wish to be critical of my colleague.

For all of you Cornell readers, let it be known that Seward was a "voracious reader" and had "a mind crammed with information gleaned from the literature of Europe and America, and from a host of American contemporaries ranging from Washington Irving to Jean Louise Rodolphe Agassiz."(Glyndon Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, p. 209.)

A Face in the Crowd

Crunch time. In two very short weeks you--the members of the Cornell Class of 2012--will be arriving in Ithaca. Have you started packing yet? Have you read the book? And written your short essay? Do you have any questions about the book, the Reading Project, or Cornell? 

Ithaca is a small place, but Cornell is a big and busy place, especially during Student Orientation and the first weeks of classes. Please know that you do not have to be just another face in the crowd. Ask your questions. There are plenty of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and librarians here to connect you with the information you need.  All you have to do is ask.

With so much to do and so little time left to do it, who has time to even think about Abraham Lincoln? You do. Above is an image of President Lincoln at Gettysburg. He is lost in the mass of people swirling around him. This close up of the image locates a familar face. Well almost. No, he is not one of the men in top hats. Rather we see him without a hat (and probably seated) in the very center of this image--lost in the crowd. Now try to spot Lincoln in these newly discovered images from that day.

To learn more about what happened in Gettysburg, listen to the NPR audio file of a 1938 interview with a man who was there that day. You can also read how the event was reported in the Friday, November 20, 1863 edition of the New York Times. And there is the Lincoln at Gettysburg Photo Tour for those of you who want to see modern images of Gettysburg sites.

See you all in Barton Hall in a few weeks.

Creating Equality

Flying home yesterday I spotted these t-shirts in the Denver airport. This city will be hosting the Democratic National Convention later this month and you can feel the politics in the hot, dry air out there. No, this is not a political endorsement. I want to focus on the words printed on these shirts. They come from Barack Obama's speech on race from March 18, 2008:

"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”

Obviously, Obama is referring to the opening lines of the U.S. Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

But Obama is also referring to the unfinished work Lincoln presents in the Gettysburg Address, which is itself referring back to the self-evident truths of the American Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." As Garry Wills states on page 146-147 of our book:

"The Gettysburg Address has become an authoritative expression of the American spirit--as authoritative as the Declaration of Independence itself, and perhaps even more influential, since it determines how we read the Declaration. For most people now, the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it."

These four texts--the Declaration, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the Obama speech--track the progress that we have made in turning rhetoric into action, and in creating a nation where all people are indeed created equal.

We also need to remember that that other senator from Illinois, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, was about to launch his campaign for re-election when he gave his speech in Gettysburg.  I wonder if there were any t-shirts for sale at the train station there?