Lincoln and the Gettysburg Awakening

All of our roads lead to Gettysburg. Tragedy and eloquence draw us back to that special place, that crossroads town, and much of what it means to be an American seems to intersect there. We are drawn back by the distant call of trumpets and by the echoes of noble purpose.

It is where our greatest gods of war clashed for three days and decided the nation's fate; it is where our most revered president set forth both the promise and the hope of the nation's future. Gettysburg is by any measure America's most hallowed ground.But while we are repeatedly drawn back to those broad fields and rolling hills and to the story they have to tell, and no matter how often we may try to satisfy our longing to understand the meaning of Gettysburg, we are left mostly listening to those distant trumpets and far-off echoes, and we are never quite sure why we should feel an almost spiritual attachment to the bloody battle that was fought there and to the rather spare words that were spoken there.One reason for that spiritual attachment is obvious. The fierce fighting that occurred at Gettysburg for three days in July 1863, when the Union Army of the Potomac collided with the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, resulted in more than fifty-one thousand casualties.

The soldiers who died there gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, the 'last full measure of devotion' as Lincoln aptly called it, and it is difficult not to see that act of sacrifice as something precious, something holy, something grandly divine. Thousands of lives were lost on every battlefield in that great and terrible war, and yet Gettysburg resonates with the deepest spiritual connections, hearkening the soul back to the bowers, forging a tangible link with the past that can, for many people, be felt and not just seen. Gettysburg, wrote Bruce Catton, 'was, and is, preeminently the great American symbol, and it is not to be touched lightly.

It has overtones.'1Overtones, indeed. Some of those overtones, the blaring ones that sound like the horns of archangels and that compel us to think of Gettysburg as sacred soil, come from the solemn words that Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. If it is any wonder that we think of Gettysburg in a spiritual way, it should not be, because it was Lincoln himself who set such thinking in motion.

It is fairly commonplace for scholars to point out that the words and phrases Lincoln used in the Gettysburg Address tend, to a great extent, to be religiously charged. One recent historian has even suggested that it was 'divine help' that told Lincoln 'how to communicate to the people assembling at Gettysburg.'2Whether or not such a thunderclap of heavenly intervention can ever be proved or even safely assumed, numerous scholars have, nevertheless, noted the plentiful passages in Lincoln's address that seem to have been borrowed from the Scriptures. Even though Lincoln said that it was beyond our poor power to consecrate the ground of Gettysburg, that is precisely what his speech achieved.

Emory M. Thomas has ruefully observed that the 'sacred acres' of Gettysburg 'have endured an absolutely harrowing degree of hallowing.'3 If we take a closer look at the Gettysburg Address, if we follow the roads that lead us back to Lincoln's supreme moment, we may begin to see that some of the blame for Gettysburg's spiritual aura belongs to Abraham Lincoln and the words he chose for his immortal speech.To begin, there is the famous opening phrase of the address, 'Fourscore and seven years ago,' a fairly ornate method of rendering a particular historical date that Lincoln could have picked up anywhere, but that must have come from his ready command of the Bible and from chapter and verse, in this case from the 'threescore years and ten' and the 'fourscore years' found in Psalms 90:10. Lincoln's reference to 'our fathers' in the first sentence is mindful of the Lord's Prayer.

It is also possible that behind Lincoln's clarion call for a 'new birth of freedom' was the idea of rebirth set forth in John 3:3–7.Apart from those specific citations, however, it is difficult to pin down the sources of Lincoln's biblical language in the Gettysburg Address. In his best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning study Lincolnat Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, Garry Wills states that the most frequent 'scriptural echoes' in the speech are from the Gospel of Luke. Philip B.

Kunhardt, Jr., argues that Lincoln relied heavily on the style and repetition of the Book of Common Prayer for his couplings of 'so conceived and so dedicated,' 'fitting and proper,' and 'little note and long remember.' The speech, says Kunhardt, also 'flared with sounds and images from the Scriptures.' A thoroughly provocative thesis, propounded by William J. Wolf in 1959, maintains that the central image of the Gettysburg Address is the Christian sacrament of baptism. 'Lincoln,' says Wolf, 'conflates the themes of the life of man in birth, baptismal dedication, and spiritual rebirth with the experience of the nation in its eighty-seven years of history.'4 Wolf may certainly be stretching things a bit, but the point is that Lincoln's speech did have a distinctive 'biblical ring.' Commentators have variously likened it to a hymn, a prayer, or a benediction.5But there are other, more subtle, reasons why Americans regard Gettysburg as hallowed ground and Lincoln's address as sacred text. It is not only Lincoln's spiritual vocabulary that ties us to Gettysburg with a mystic chord, as Lincoln himself might have called it.

There is also something beneath the surface, something emotional and sensational. Magic happened at Gettysburg, but we have long since lost sight of it. Lincoln predicted that the world would not remember what was said over the graves at Gettysburg, and although he was wrong because his words have become immortal, he was correct if he also meant that the full impact of his words would fade over time, like colors that grow dull and dark on an ancient painting.Historians are not quite sure what actually took place at Gettysburg, and the fact is that we may never know for certain the details of that day.

We are left with a multitude of conflicting evidence and eyewitness testimony. Some people swore that Lincoln wrote his remarks on a scrap of paper while riding the train to Gettysburg; others, on the same train, swore that he wrote nothing at all during the entire journey. Some said, too, that Lincoln spoke his words from memory, never once glancing at the sheets of paper he held in his left hand (or was it his right?).

Other observers remarked how Lincoln carefully read his text, word for word, from the sheets of paper he held in his right hand (or was it both hands?).6It should come as no surprise that this pivotal event in American history, this great and shining moment in Lincoln's presidency, is clouded in contradictory testimony and murky mythology. In our own lifetime, we have come to see, in the case of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, how unreliable and conflicting the memories of witnesses can be. In the place of facts, myths are readily substituted; or, worse, the stuff of legend is interwoven with the truth in so tight a fabric that one thread cannot be distinguished from the other.

So, too, with the Gettysburg Address. We know far less than we ought to know about it. And we know far less than we would surely like to know.

Sorting it all out strand by strand is almost impossible.But not entirely impossible. If we are to recapture the magic of the Gettysburg Address, we must try to reconstruct the event itself and get a picture of the moment that can take us beyond the few famous but very fuzzy photographs that were snapped on Cemetery Hill that November day. There is, luckily, enough evidence to give us a pretty good idea of what the scene was like.By all accounts, the crowds were enormous.

People had come from far and wide to attend the dedication ceremonies; for many, it was a journey they would never forget. Streets leading into Gettysburg were clogged to capacity, a newspaper reporter wrote, 'by citizens from every quarter thronging into the village in every kind of vehicle—old Pennsylvania wagons, spring wagons, carts, family carriages, buggies, and more fashionable modern vehicles, all crowded with citizens—kept pouring into the town in one continual string.' The armies had long since left Gettysburg, but now the town was overwhelmed by a new 'invading host' who came by wagon, by train, by horse, and by foot to witness history in the making.7On the night before the dedication of the cemetery, the crowd took over the town and turned it into something resembling a fairgrounds. Along the streets, torches lit the way for the surging mass of people who jammed the avenues and the taverns, the hotels, and the boardinghouses.

The noise in the street was almost deafening. Bands played, people sang, and rowdies shouted.8 There was an odd festive air, an air for wild rovers, in Gettysburg that night—not the kind of atmosphere one would associate with the solemn occasion of a cemetery dedication. Men were drinking, and some men were getting drunk.

Even John Hay and John Nicolay, Lincoln's private secretaries, imbibed a few glasses of whiskey and sang a few songs. Nicolay, said Hay in his diary, 'sung his little song of the 'Three Thieves,' and then we sung 'John Brown.' '9Hoping to see Lincoln, the crowd serenaded him that evening at the home of David Wills, where the president was spending the night, and called for him to come out. Lincoln made an appearance, stood in the doorway for a few minutes, and then quietly slipped back inside.

Later a larger crowd gathered and made a terrible racket, calling for the president from beneath a window at the Wills house. A military band played a few songs. A group of young women sang 'We Are Coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More.' A male quartet also serenaded.

When Lincoln reappeared, the crowd asked him to say a few words, something he did not like doing without a prepared text. But he did make a few extemporaneous remarks. Lincoln retreated quickly, however, and the crowd moved next door and found William Seward, the secretary of state, who was more than willing to deliver a speech.

Lincoln spent the rest of the night writing and briefly conferring with Seward. Around midnight, Lincoln went to bed, but it is hard to imagine anyone getting much sleep that night, given the high spirits and loud revelries of the merry multitudes.10With the daylight it was easier to guess the size of the crowd. Some observers thought that there were as many as twenty thousand people in town, although a more reasonable estimate places the size of the crowd at about fifteen thousand.

When the president emerged from the Wills house to join the procession of dignitaries marching to the cemetery, the crowd responded Lincoln was with and of people to his hand or first the mass of people in an but things out of and people Lincoln back and forth and in all Hill of the and Lincoln's the crowd to The people but not before a few more for and was a for the was a Gettysburg the out in The procession up Cemetery Hill to the marching of military and all but one of the were to their on the The was for an as for the to and take his place on the he was a little before the and the crowd in and wonder as the the of few had ever seen. who what took place that at Gettysburg would never it. one noted years We had very much more that than we crowd was ready for something to and they did not have to a was played by of the of the a prayer, a for the nation to remember that the of their young and with such memories of and and and and they died for words a The that with the Lord's and and the remarked that was a in all that Lincoln was those and his was as of the of his a of the of people who could not the played an the nation's most famous was address, in as he the history of the of Gettysburg the of the great of the The crowd was and by was a and precisely how to an but his emotional may have his The in to some people from the of the the or the of the and the of the where the fighting had place his speech, and as he did the back to the and for the next of the for the occasion was sung as a by the to the of the and his President of the what occurred during the next or three cannot be It is certain that Lincoln his or at a of what we know as the Gettysburg Address, but beyond that only the of history seems John Hay rather in his diary, in a way, with more than is his said his words of and the and we went home crowded and And all the are in the know that there was more to the Gettysburg Address than If there was magic that did take place, a spiritual that touched the soul of America, then we should be to for it in the of the of people who him that The crowd at Gettysburg had played a in the of this the should us what we to know about the impact and its the evidence the is rather with It is so only because the testimony of witnesses seems to that the crowd in contradictory at both and with great and with great Some observers said that the crowd Lincoln's words, even to the point of the address with B. who wrote the that the had sung that that Lincoln's word at had been by a of that when the president had the crowd gave him three and three more for the of the the who Lincoln's words in the places where the crowd Lincoln with although many years that he had the to the of and that he actually could not remember any at Other however, were absolutely sure that no a that there was during and the speech. was the had a word, not a not a how could that be could some witnesses there was and there was have not to the they to take some the idea of a that the in If we that both and are that we may begin to see as about the impact of Lincoln's the evidence us is that the people who Lincoln's speech very but to the Some people during the the address as a solemn of and stood in of the man and his The emotional to Lincoln's address that took place was and And it very the had been with The crowd was in high The played had to many an speech had and and And now Lincoln, with a words, had touched the deepest of went so in that it took many by When Lincoln than three some of the were not quite sure he had to one people, gave no of or of the Gettysburg cannot be entirely that of of were by Lincoln as certain that it was not although it seems that Lincoln thought his speech as much a as In any some people were so by Lincoln's words, because of the of his speech or the emotional power of what he had said, that they did not in did not in any was a a Gettysburg of would have been out of there were of as one it, and there was great all at the crowd was by a of Some responded with others, like who they could a or a who and their to their this and into at the of the were touched in a of One Union was by Lincoln's remarks. the president the that they all stood over the place where had and in by the if how words on this Lincoln's address forth a moment of at that moment the had to with an to past give back to a sound from the even of past and those that must all the years to should have the such was the of this immortal the president told the crowd that the world could never what the soldiers of the had at Gettysburg, an and to a reporter who his to and in and solemn Abraham was not at Gettysburg but who his from William of who was that the first sentence was a of like an the who were not there that the words Lincoln had spoken were William of it, few words of the President were from the to the cannot be without who Lincoln deliver the address, it but he said, was so people had it was not into was it at all what they had One modern Garry Wills, has the Gettysburg to the used in the dedication of such as in in while that is and it is not took place at the the and speech of the and the emotional to quite from the solemn and of the cemetery It is most in that an at the of any cemetery in would have three for the as the crowd at Gettysburg did for If the Gettysburg dedication at it was more like a than a cemetery not to that and the of the Gettysburg Lincoln was no and Gettysburg was no the and of had given a during the of the were not by the at the Gettysburg dedication. But the emotional to Lincoln's address seem to be to the of those the by the had into carefully and for prayer, and that the of the of the and the in Lincoln's home of some would a might be moved to and might be by the of an and of trumpets and of military would up out of the But the point is that a of emotional some and some some and some himself was with such were a of the in he had been In where Lincoln in the were although Lincoln to a group of who to read by Thomas and rather than to the of Lincoln of such spiritual and he never quite came to with the and of any or Christian but he did attend from to time, just as he went to in his on and an and who spent his in who from experience what were all that Lincoln had at one as a young The said had a on Lincoln, when the the of in a war, and Lincoln, so the story had a of himself as an of that The story is almost certainly but it at the very Lincoln's at such The man was for did not at although he seems to have from their some about words for emotional the at who often took on the of of Lincoln could also at seem like an was precisely how many people his at Gettysburg. One the Gettysburg how Lincoln and his words to a over the said that Lincoln's the called so a to every The was and his every word and A few years the Gettysburg dedication, a that Lincoln's address the of sounds more like or than the of like a of at Gettysburg because what he said spiritual Lincoln a new of new on American the mystic of that Lincoln to in his Address.

Garry Wills has Lincoln a at Gettysburg by the central of the of a new as a of the not at Lincoln had once have never had a that did not spring from the in the of Gettysburg, his address back to those were to the that all men are and then with hope that those those could be in a new and a of the American people, new birth of freedom' in the nation that would be as and as as the spiritual of a or a great In this Lincoln at Gettysburg the that the be and a new that soul new in the of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln was his own great 1863, at great had place during America's in the and the in the of the although they were both by and an of and are to point out that a great is more than just a of spiritual A great as William is actually a of that in a in and and the of a world are the means by itself to new and its to those are when the world is turned so it was in America's the The war had great with it, and it was to see in the of that the or would never be the In his to in Lincoln had said, of the are to the The occasion is high with and we must to the our case is so we must think and act We must and then we our A the from the what Lincoln was the for the even before the fighting was to itself and its as a way of that had the first that in 1863, when he had the a that the of the Union into a to make men But something was to the the of and the promise of in the of The Gettysburg Address was that Lincoln's speech was a for the nation to the of in the to itself into a new a In Lincoln's such a would an act to spiritual an of what he had called of the on Lincoln's of during the president of the Confederate of America, wrote, Union with in to the of a was not entirely but what he did not could not see at that Lincoln's the of his was not a and to the of but rather a of that the of his and Gettysburg Address was Lincoln's supreme of that And he used his carefully words to an the a rebirth of a for his Americans to their own just as the Book of in the the to a new and a new There Lincoln said at Gettysburg, and great before the American all the and and what his emotional could not and what he did not know was that the would for yet to did he understand that his words would the and the of of Americans down the years and that his address, by the of his spiritual for the birth of a new America, would compel us more to think of Gettysburg as a sacred