Book completed
May. 1st, 2023 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeLincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America, by Garry Wills. This is surely the best and most thorough book on the Gettysburg Address, explaining how Lincoln used an ancient Greek form, comparing his speech with the two-hour one by Edward Everett that came before it, describing the day it was delivered (Nov. 19, 1863) and the controversies about the exact text, when it was written, where he was standing, and all that.
The most important point is probably the author's claim that Lincoln used this speech to reset the public's idea that the Constitution was the founding document of the United States; Lincoln believed instead it was the Declaration of Independence. This has two main implications. The obvious one is that the Declaration focuses on human equality, which the Constitution never mentions; rather, it has all sorts of allowances for slavery. The less obvious one, which was very important to Lincoln, was that signing the Declaration committed all of the people of the area to the Union, which happened years before states ratified the constitution and therefore negates arguments that states have the right to secede.
I decided that before I could consider myself to have finished the book I would have to read the appendices. However, the third appendix was that long Everett speech, and I only skimmed the first half of that because I couldn't follow the details of all the military engagements he describes, not knowing the locations of all those battlefields.
The most important point is probably the author's claim that Lincoln used this speech to reset the public's idea that the Constitution was the founding document of the United States; Lincoln believed instead it was the Declaration of Independence. This has two main implications. The obvious one is that the Declaration focuses on human equality, which the Constitution never mentions; rather, it has all sorts of allowances for slavery. The less obvious one, which was very important to Lincoln, was that signing the Declaration committed all of the people of the area to the Union, which happened years before states ratified the constitution and therefore negates arguments that states have the right to secede.
I decided that before I could consider myself to have finished the book I would have to read the appendices. However, the third appendix was that long Everett speech, and I only skimmed the first half of that because I couldn't follow the details of all the military engagements he describes, not knowing the locations of all those battlefields.