The Drama of Liberty, Equality, and Self-Government at Gettysburg

Two new and resourceful studies have come to us, both published on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address. Both deepen our understanding of that compelling and elusive work, and each is somewhat problematic in its conclusions. Jared Peatman industriously examines Lincoln’s dedicatory remarks in light of their reception over the following hundred years.

Martin P. Johnson returns to the hallowed site to ponder Lincoln’s process of composition in the context of the political and devotional geography of Gettysburg itself. Both books analyze and contemplate the strange fact that Lincoln’s address reaches into our time with a defining power that 150 years of commentary have yet to encompass.Peatman argues, against Gabor Boritt, Garry Wills, and others, that the precise shape and meaning of the long shadow of the Gettysburg Address were not adequately recognized for a long time—indeed, not until the 1960s.1 In that era of crisis and moral fervor, Lincoln’s message that all men are created equal finally became actualized in legislation.

At Gettysburg Lincoln reanimated the Declaration of Independence and captured the significance of democratic government, but for a century his words were ignored, deflected, misappropriated, faintly echoed, selectively quoted, and misleadingly praised.For Peatman, the deepest meaning of Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg is that equality is a “necessity,” without which democratic government, which ensures freedom, cannot continue: “For Lincoln, freedom and equality were connected, one impossible without the other” (23). Whether by lack of commitment or by moral comprehension, Lincoln’s immediate audience and their descendants failed to make that connection. It took the wheels of history, the moral force of the Civil Rights Movement, and the threat of ever greater social disruption to manifest the meaning of Lincoln’s words in law.

By implication, then, liberty and equality were in no way secured or brought into combination by the Founders’ charters: the Declaration and the Constitution. Real freedom and real equality could not exist until they were coexistent in law.Peatman works to show that newspaper coverage and other appropriations of Lincoln’s words were scattered or insufficient. There were predictable differences between the North and the South in their reactions, some of them surprising.

Peatman finds that the newspaper of Lincoln supporter Horace Greeley, the New York Tribune, said nothing much for years about the Address or its preamble about equality. The strongly antiabolitionist New York World, taking up a venerable Democratic argument from the North and the South, was quick to criticize what it saw as the president’s illegitimate reliance on the Declaration over the Constitution. For three years the New York Times ignored the Address.

Only in 1869 did it begin to praise it.Although Lincoln’s address rose rapidly in general esteem in the North, appearing in school readers there as early as 1888, Peatman argues that the overall response was retrograde. He cites the most popular appropriation of the Address, the short story “The Perfect Tribute” by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, as a case in point. Appearing in Scribner’s Magazine in 1906, it introduced an ahistorical, revisionary approach to the Address that held the American imagination for generations.

It merely told people, Peatman asserts, what they wanted to hear. Andrews immortalized a humble yet wise and long-suffering Lincoln who depends on pencil and brown paper to write his unpretentious lines. He is humbled first by his lack of polished rhetorical ability and later by what seems to be a crushing silence after the delivery of his brief remarks.

When he accidentally becomes, on his return to Washington, the kind anonymous bedside comforter of a dying Confederate officer, he is gratified to hear the young man praise the speech as a deathless message that will bring the sections together on the basis of their patriotism. Indeed, when we return to the story text we see that the Confederate is not at all interested in Lincoln’s statement about equality. To the officer, the Address appeals to his desire for reconciliation on the basis of high-minded brotherhood in arms.

Each side fights unselfishly for its country.A more detailed discussion of “The Perfect Tribute” would uncover more of the substance of Andrews’s lasting if defective appeal to audiences North and South, as well as her literary ingenuity. Given that generations of Americans have known, and to some degree accepted as true, a number of her story’s elements, whether they have read the work or not, it is worth questioning the notion that their response is fundamentally perverse and retrograde.The fact that she skillfully crafts the narrative to win sympathy and assent tells us, whatever that narrative’s retrograde purposes and effects, that her audience has a disposition that is capable of rejecting her portrait or reading it differently. Her appeal to low or retrograde motives addresses higher capacities.

The complex history of the reception of the Gettysburg Address might be enriched by closer attention to such deflections.2Lincoln enters the Andrews story as a man of the people who is also in need: he is seemingly alone with his humble genius, apparently misunderstood not only by his silent audience at Gettysburg but by himself. This condition in fact makes Lincoln akin to the isolated, dying Confederate whom he eventually encounters at the prison hospital, where he offers to write the young man’s will. The president is unrecognized by those around him and in a sense does not recognize himself.

He believes, as his friend Ward Lamon said he believed in the few days immediately after the ceremony, that his speech was a failure. Yet the conversation between the unknown president and the dying officer takes place in a world of melancholy isolation illuminated by goodwill. Each man is looking for some form of confirmation, and each receives it, though incompletely, from the other.The appeal of Andrews’s fiction comes from more than a mere spirit of denial and a love of happy endings.

She does not misquote Lincoln’s words; her story repeats them in their entirety at its beginning. She makes clear that the two main characters are not of one mind about slavery, depicting the young man’s contempt for the speech’s opening lines despite his admiration for the orator and the speech as a whole. The Gettysburg Address, he says, is “one of the great speeches of history” (38).

But “of course, it’s all wrong from my point of view. The thought that underlies it is warped, inverted, as I look at it” (45). He will not speak the words about equality in the Address, even though they are fresh in our memory because Andrews has put them in the story’s first pages.

In part or in their totality, we aren’t sure, they so have captured the prisoner’s imagination that he tries to articulate his wonderment in the broken syntax of a dying man. In a voice sweet and opinionated, patient and “impetuous,” he tries to articulate what they mean, and asks for his visitor’s approval.All humanity, he says, might be lifted by the sentiments of the Address: “‘It lifts humanity to something worth dying for. . . . Do you agree with me?’ ‘There’s nothing finer. . . .

I only feel the love of country, the satisfaction of giving my life for it. The speech—that speech—has made it look higher and simpler—your side as well as ours’” (44–6). Unable to join with the Union and support what Lincoln has called its founding principles, he prizes the display of a common humanity in Lincoln’s magnanimity, and the two sides’ devotion to “our country.” His dying words echo lines from the Second Inaugural (“as God gives us to see the right”) but give them changed meanings: both sides have fought for “the right of our country as it is given us to see it” (46).

Lincoln listens quietly. “I believe it is a good speech,” he finally replies. He has heard praise for the speech “with a happy heart.” Something has happened so that he no longer thinks it a failure. But what that is, precisely, is unclear.

His indirect reply does not endorse the young man’s rejection of the Address’s preface or the idea that “our country” can be two countries joined in patriotic sentiment. In saying that it is a “good speech,” Andrews’s Lincoln points readers back to the speech itself, in the story’s introduction. Beyond its appeal—and it is a considerable as Peatman the desire to the sections without the of or the story also to Lincoln’s in the preface of the Gettysburg Address, of the idea of a common in the years following “The Perfect the of the Gettysburg to the of Lincoln’s on the of Lincoln’s the Gettysburg Address.

Peatman finds in his “the that the Gettysburg Address Americans equality with the But was more Lincoln’s power as a in his in the Address, to “the of the and the of the in that could For he was a great man capable of audiences with of and only in that speech and nothing about new of he does not to what Lincoln’s was clear In the and one more the to than Lincoln and he a great over his in to those for as an a and he could not its without the or the Address was into a few years Peatman when the Lincoln was in the two most who at the on not and an New York newspaper put from of points that at the president who and on the saw the differently. There are two of his remarks in the of have that the to the first of remarks about the to the of all and that as a read from a more Peatman that the of a for created a speech that was from the But that is a not held by one examines the two one have but not all to The two speeches are in overall and in much of their in the first about the of to the of and Lincoln, have in the by an of history of the between freedom and in American history, a he was brought to in the Civil He later sections of the speech to the the of people, and on that and he is silent about political and social But he from the more its narrative of the of the Civil a narrative that on the and of Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg and Second Inaugural In the of that story is a all Americans have he more about the meaning of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg and its with the Second Inaugural than in the was at for her from at The first was to the of freedom, freedom of thought and freedom of the the of a to and then, American a the two great that were to shape the of the . . . was the great compelling force that and a great and the of to the of But a was by into the of the who for liberty and the in and it its for to that from of our in place the of and in and on and “the of is “the by to her It is a to The of that and the of its all on the by the Civil by implication, a of to the Lincoln thought most In the process of as was great the of liberty and the of from the at and in the of strange it is, the that of those who and their into be those who of of of and even of in that a people not of their of their or but common humanity, have the of liberty and freedom which they precise political of is a for But we can that its and with Lincoln’s as well as to Lincoln’s and on Lincoln’s argument that the of is for that its has and that if freedom and those are to be as a common the of that depends on the generations that Peatman later to bring the Gettysburg Address into the new he does not them as to the of the is political will and and of Lincoln’s speech in the early part of the such as those by and are but they to of the in which Lincoln’s makes his of is at a not commitment and for history is moral we it in to on in what is we make of a by a of and the Civil and the for to bring about the some form are of for and in of political have an but its are not to In when they or to the of taking will in such that be made in or the of we read the Gettysburg Address and and in such is not a for to or to with There are and of The our understanding of process in the context of Lincoln’s political life is His power to is by Lincoln is as have as a wise yet lack moral the crisis him to a the Lincoln For most of the time to the Gettysburg Address, he for of not the and of freedom for all on that he finally the and the real into one place and so takes on the of He finally what we see what he have Peatman it, the long shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is clear in but and in even though it is to be one of Lincoln’s Do we it in way The does a good of the to the speech for and purposes by and of in the and early to and its from the of its But up to that and in the years the of the Address in the appropriations and that Peatman is by Lincoln’s the Address’s about and for the people, saw in the of and its the world But the Address’s of and devotion with the and of the new could be adequately and in such or by the by generations of from context have “the men and who has long as Confederate in Lincoln’s Gettysburg In its the Address to have a the address in the of and not as a mere display of In an opening of Lincoln, its by a of American it back at the president as a of and equality as we them in the Address or them to it are not so to Peatman that the meaning of equality a fact for all in democratic with and (46). The general history of the Gettysburg Address’s reception would to the of that does Lincoln when he that men are created as an a moral but something to be the is one of whether that so and so can is that one of alone or is it also a of a and our understanding of that which is in the new The Gettysburg Address is Lincoln’s most of what equality the of that and as which for an understanding of equality that is to our as created with we merely that we what equality is and only on it, have we adequately our Gettysburg and the Lincoln is we what liberty and equality on Lincoln’s in the Gettysburg as well about the meaning of Lincoln’s idea of of the people, by the people, for the is it to his with and its In his he to the political that would that form of only one he “the to to the Democratic Lincoln with and the people, in one where he with of in Lincoln’s speech to on where in the Confederate for he by saying that is not adequately without its to His his thought and in the of the Gettysburg Address: The Civil to the of the whether a or a of the people, by the or its against its case and are depends not only on freedom and equality but also on a form of that to of popular will as well as as to that not to of that popular In a the people make and to that not as a of the will but as that are and against from as well as from such is merely by Lincoln as their people are to and those of the to Lincoln of when that its and the that that are by an the of a to The Peatman it is to that to our and for The Gettysburg Address seems made for and that P. of the Gettysburg Address, takes a The shape and meaning of the in its composition and delivery and the history of later are his points of He new that have a on our understanding of what Lincoln The history of the Address in the of and the the which it was and in the of its and more than an or it does both the Gettysburg Address is a of and with It is a of as well as It by with patient to and so that of meaning come into view.

The from of commentary but seems most as a revisionary and of and in Lincoln’s and It addresses and in of the is not with the idea that the of the Address form a or that there is a and delivery that Lincoln to He does not the that to the of a in the His is not only to a of the by the history of the Address but also to the of that in Lincoln’s up to most Lincoln’s of the that and the he after back at the Johnson argues, the Address’s into about Lincoln’s process of Johnson argues that an text of the speech in Lincoln’s on the is the that published in and was Lincoln’s at Johnson the that the by and published in be the for the or of the speech have in but for his they are the point. delivery text was over to Lincoln the because they his not because he differences between his text and that of the By the early published were those Johnson from a few with the Johnson was the of not a of and from Lincoln’s the the of with to the of the that he “the words by the with great The text is the from which Lincoln and that later their way into the Lincoln later that he said captured his but those no to the the is not from those of the Address we read as it is also The first is in on the in pencil on The two are of its we in all is strange to our There are The have as more because they we Lincoln as the but in the other and that make the speech more and somewhat more than it is in the Johnson a new of that Lincoln’s to the on the of the was a His of the place and the to have his with the place where was to the of a delivery that changed and the meaning of his of the are to two the first in but in and the in pencil and made up of lines without to the that Lincoln made in a of and Johnson that Lincoln the greater part of the Address in but then, on in and the in pencil and made on on the but most in the the in the of the Lincoln with some the Johnson makes a good case for one of his points a place that was a hallowed on the site in where one of Lincoln’s and the Union to at in the of the Union as he his men to the in the first of the Only Lincoln’s of the of the that eventually fought at Gettysburg In in his In at the place where a with his time for Union Lincoln would have the Union Johnson might have that at that the at the of the Union a of after to the to its that Lincoln to the for and an of in an It was at that Johnson argues, that Lincoln made his Johnson we see one of the of that in the which is in pencil on one will what they did see a and at the of the and on the an of Lincoln’s for to have Lincoln in but he to that the way to the for Lincoln’s words is that they were by something seemingly by a or to with the power and meaning of they did The meaning of the is not only by Lincoln’s on it is by a more imagination of the and a more to join in and what has for and the new Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg his audience in that imagination and taking them from what happened an that an of of his as a young at the Johnson that of the of the Address’s is The newspaper of the which are the basis for the later not the Johnson that they have they the of Lincoln’s the words that Lincoln as he and in and what he In of Johnson fundamentally from Gabor and to some degree from his of a hundred and years of Johnson does us the of the discussion by to about Lincoln’s at the history of Lincoln’s Johnson that it took to write the Gettysburg Indeed, a of and . . . the history” of what we to be the text of Lincoln’s words At the Lincoln’s of the speech was and the in and the were what The we have are despite to the Lincoln’s process of in its by his to the to his of his overall as did his delivery and his later to published by the there something more than the in all something It is worth the of the Address that it are read Lincoln to an in the but one he more than from the of a as though to something a it is not to the between what Lincoln was there and what is as the in which the were the This would not be the first time that a made that on the of and in Lincoln’s work and that one to about Lincoln’s indirect yet of It is saying nothing but worth that those who “the of from whom the devotion to that for which they that not without to the one who in that which is given for the in my It would not be to that the greater part of Lincoln’s audience would have on Lincoln’s the of the Union with the and a course, Lincoln from even when he from the His precise to but the that he gives to and the fact of they did which makes so and as well as that are more than rhetorical more by as well as can we after reading both books about the Gettysburg Address’s of its to and the of both to new of Peatman to for a of liberty and both with and freedom, Johnson does not the of his argument for a more complex understanding of what seems to be the Address’s the a new of freedom, as Lincoln the worth of their in from their their and the their the and that is to at Gettysburg from and in that we look at the of the Address and their to the in the light of we see more that Lincoln would have his and Lincoln a to make a to so that have a new of Address us see that the great of the American is not the as mere Lincoln between a merely and an idea of on the spirit of the and of Lincoln’s message in the to read the Address as the over the Lincoln at the that even a and for the people would into if the people their and as without its to on equality the that makes Gettysburg what it yet by the that all men are created equal would in a democratic the were by those by their liberty to it and for it. At Gettysburg Lincoln the of as for a new of freedom brought about by a a and devotion to liberty and Lincoln is to such and new Martin P. is good He a sense of story back into the history of the Gettysburg understanding and of that us to see what would have Johnson also Gettysburg into the with an ability to what might well have Lincoln’s of composition at at that place are to feel a something from a of the force of a and the of Johnson to a number of he us back the text of the Address in the context of the and of Lincoln’s at Gettysburg to the of This offers to a sense of they did