Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (8 page)

It is for Americans, more especially, to nourish a nobler sentiment, one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country; and to
feel
that they love it, not because it
is
their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty—the favored scene of human improvement. It is for them, more especially, to examine their institutions; and to
feel
that they honor them because they are based on just principles. It is for them, more especially, to examine their institutions, because they have the means of improving them; to examine their laws, because at will they can alter them. It is for them to lay aside luxury whose wealth is in industry; idle parade whose strength is in knowledge; ambitious distinctions whose principle is equality. It is for them not to rest, satisfied with words, who can seize upon things; and to remember that equality means, not the mere equality of political rights, however valuable, but equality of instruction and equality in virtue; and that liberty means, not the mere voting at elections, but the free and fearless exercise of the mental faculties and that self-possession which springs out of well-reasoned opinions and consistent practice. It is for them to honor principles rather than men—to commemorate events rather than days; when they rejoice, to know for what they rejoice, and to rejoice only for what has brought and what brings peace and happiness to men.

The event we commemorate this day has procured much of both, and shall procure in the onward course of human improvement more than we can now conceive of. For this—for the good obtained and yet in store for our race—let us rejoice! But let us rejoice as men, not as children—as human beings rather than as Americans—as reasoning beings, not as ignorants. So shall we rejoice to good purpose and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the Jubilee of Independence.

“I shall be glad,” wrote orator Edward Everett to the president a day after the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, “if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.” Lincoln replied, “In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one….”

The back-of-the-envelope legend is strictly a legend; this carefully composed speech was not written on the way to the event. Noah Brooks, Lincoln’s favorite reporter, stated that some days before the November 19, 1863, dedication, he saw Lincoln in Washington and that the president told him his Gettysburg remarks were “written, ‘but not finished.’”

In an early draft, according to historian J. G. Randall, “It is for us, the living, to stand here” was changed to “…to be dedicated here.” After the speech was delivered, Lincoln made further revisions in the copy to be distributed to the Associated Press; it included “under God,” which he had added on the podium; perhaps he recalled Treasury Secretary Chase’s admonition to add a reference to the Deity to the Emancipation Proclamation, issued at the start of 1863.

The 266-word address opens with “Four score and seven,” adding a note of biblical solemnity to the number 87. It concludes with a succession of parallel phrases that may have been inspired by abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker, who in 1850 wrote, “This [American] idea, demands… a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people….”

The speech can be read as a poem based on the metaphor of birth, death, and rebirth—with its subtle evocation of the resurrection of Christ—and focused on the theme of the nation’s rededication to the principle of freedom.

Four images of birth are embedded in its opening sentence: the nation was “
conceived
in liberty”; “
brought forth
,” or born, “by our
fathers
“; with all men “
created
equal.” This birth is followed by images of death—“
final resting
place
,” “who
gave their lives
,” “brave men, living and
dead
,” “these honored
dead
”—and by verbs of religious purification—“
consecrate… hallow
.”

After the nation’s symbolic birth and death comes resurrection: out of the scene of death, “this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth
of freedom” and thus “
not perish
,” but be immortal.

The central word, as Lincoln’s emendation of his early draft illustrates, is “dedicate”—used five times in the short speech, its meaning rooted in consecration, making the secular sacred by pledging it to God. The first two dedications are to the Declaration of Independence’s ideal—“that all men are created equal.” The third dedication centers on the purpose of the occasion at Gettysburg’s bloody battleground, “to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place.” The fourth and fifth are rededications to the ideals of the reborn nation: “to the unfinished work” and “to the great task remaining before us.”

Birth of a nation and its ideal; its symbolic death and purification in civil war; its rebirth in freedom with “increased devotion to that cause”—a profound and timeless idea, poetically presented in metaphor and a reverent tone, rolling toward its conclusion of immortality with a succession of four “that” clauses that lend themselves to rhythmic delivery—no wonder this is recognized so widely as the best short speech since the Sermon on the Mount.

***

FOUR SCORE AND
seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

American humorist Mark Twain was in London on July 4, 1899, and was asked to deliver one of the speeches at the Fourth of July dinner given there by the American society. After a series of speakers that included Joseph Hodges Choate, America’s new ambassador to Great Britain, Twain delivered his address, “The Day We Celebrate.”

Typical of Twain’s anecdotal style, this speech veered dangerously far afield from the stated topic of Independence Day. Differences in etiquette and language began his address, as he raised the usage question of “an historical” that has continued to be linguistically controversial throughout the twentieth century. With little pretense of transitions, Twain moved from his story of the clergyman’s hat to an assessment of the financial and physical dangers of the Fourth of July, a day that sparks “the old war spirit.”

Eight years later on July 4, when Twain addressed the same society, he embellished his assessment with a tall tale. On Independence Day, he said, one of his uncles had “opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket
went down his throat…. It blew up and scattered him all over the forty-five states, and—really, now, this is true—I know about it myself—twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard.”

***

I NOTICED IN
Ambassador Choate’s speech that he said, “You may be Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time.” You responded by applause.

Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a senator, and I come third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability!

I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one side—its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side. It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a historical side.

I do not say “an” historical side, because I am speaking the American language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say “an” hospital, “an” historical fact, “an” horse. It seems to me the Congress of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think “an” is having a little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for many things.

Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an innocent act on his part. He went out first and, of course, had the choice of hats. As a rule, I try to get out first myself. But I hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody’s hat. The result was that the whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.

It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the church somehow or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here when they say “an” hospital, “an” European, “an” historical.

The business aspect of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands
with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance offices—and they are working it for all it is worth.

I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.

I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.

“It appeared to me in January, 1914,” wrote Coolidge in his 1929 autobiography, “that a spirit of radicalism prevailed which unless checked was likely to prove very destructive…. What was needed was a restoration of confidence in our own institutions and in each other, on which economic progress might rest.”

In taking the chair of the Massachusetts senate, the Vermonter who would become the thirtieth president made what he described as “a short
address, which [he] had carefully prepared, appealing to the conservative spirit of the people.” The speech was widely remarked in Republican circles; it was circulated at the party’s national convention in Chicago in 1920, and helped get him on the Harding ticket.

“Keep Cool with Coolidge” was the slogan he ran on in 1924, having succeeded Harding; the reputation for taciturnity was a source of both admiration and scorn. Dorothy Parker declared him “weaned on a pickle,” and although President Reagan hung the Coolidge portrait in the Cabinet Room, his reputation today is that of an inarticulate sourpuss. Few of those who put him down, however, could write the sort of direct, powerful prose in the address that launched his national career, and which is printed here in its entirety.

The sentences are short and declarative. The argument marches steadily to its conclusion. The paragraph that begins, “Do the day’s work…,” is as punchy and sensible as any delivered by a U.S. politician. French philosopher Buffon wrote, “The style is the man himself,” meaning that the expression reveals the person, and nowhere is that more true than in this exposition of limited government by a man who limited what he had to say to what he thought strictly necessary.

***

I THANK YOU
—with gratitude for the high honor given, with appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed—I thank you.

This commonwealth is one. We are all members of one body. The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. Industry cannot flourish if labor languish. Transportation cannot prosper if manufactures decline. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all. The suspension of one man’s dividends is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.