Chamblee54

November 19, 2013 was the 151st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This was seven score, and eleven years, ago. This is not as poetic as four score and seven. The famous speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride to the battlefield was too bumpy to write on, so it was written elsewhere. No one is sure what happened to the original.
The text was published in newspapers, and became famous. Relatively few people heard the actual speech. Not everyone was impressed. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union said “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 be no more repeated or thought of.” The descendent of this paper, The Patriot-News, printed a retraction in 2013. Better late than never.
Other contemporaries were critical. Presidents are politicians, with allies and enemies, and are not often beloved in their own time. The New York World accused Lincoln of “gross ignorance or willful misstatement” with his declaration of “four score and seven years ago.” The Democratic Chicago Times called the address “a perversion of history so flagrant that the extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.”
H.L. Mencken had a few unkind things to say about the affair. “But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—”that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. “
As the rest of the linked essay points out, one motivation for the Confederates desire for self determination is to maintain the ability to own other human beings. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” This is a repost.