Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Gettysburg Address - A Masterpiece of Falsehood and Political Spin


Soldiers' National Monument - Site of the Gettysburg Address

Seven score and six years ago today, April 19,  1863, President Abraham Lincoln stood on a platform near the present day site of Soldiers' National Monument in Gettysburg National Cemetery and gave his famous Gettysburg Address. 

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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not 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.

I memorized those lines when I was a kid growing up in the public schools of Tennessee and proudly stood in front of the class to recite them.  The Gettysburg Address sounded good to me and I assumed the things it said were true.  That's when I was a child.

Looking back, from the perspective of having studied American history for more than sixty years, I realize how false Lincoln's speech really was.  Dishonest Abe Lincoln was a master of political spin, whose words were the polar opposite of his deeds.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people was exactly the thing he was trying to crush in his unconstitutional and brutal attack on the Confederate nation.  It was the Confederates who, to the point of laying down their lives, believed in government of, by and for the people.  

Lincoln's words are a mockery when one considers that he held 13,000 northern political prisoners, without trial or due process of law - just because they disagreed with his illegal war.  He was a dictator, whose every action demonstrated that what he truly believed in was government of the president, by the president and for the president - the people be damned.  

Was Lincoln's War to prevent Southern Independence waged so that government "of the people" might not "perish from the earth?"  Hardly.  Outside observers saw Lincoln's war for what it truly was, as stated in the London Times, September 13, 1862:

If Northerners ... had peaceably allowed the seceders to depart, the result might fairly have been quoted as illustrating the advantages of Democracy, but when Republicans put empire above liberty, and resorted to political oppression and war ... It was clear that nature at Washington was precisely the same as nature at St. Petersburg (Russia) ....  Democracy broke down ... when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms.  

Famous American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), said of the Gettysburg Address:

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 the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. 

Photo and story by J. Stephen Conn
Posted by at 9:15 AM

4 comments:

  1. Ah yes the old dodge that the North was not really fighting for the right of self-government. And I would expect you in your lost causer mindset. But when you consider the confederate point-of-view...the holding nearly 4 million people in slavery, denying the free blacks of the south basic civil rights (I know, neither did the North prior to or during the war, but the North did pass the 13-14-15 amendments to provide the basic rights to the former slaves), waging a war against the Constitutionally election of a man to the presidency, seizing national property in states before passing ordinances of secession.

    I am surprised you used Mencken...but then again his quote you used on the Gettysburg address is very famous in Lost Causer circles. I was wondering about the London Times quote. Is this one of the articles Karl Marx is refering to in his letter to Lincoln?
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  2. Thanks for commenting on my site. The focus of my site may be different than yours, but we stand for the same thing.

    What I didn't add to my piece was that my great-grandfather was only speaking to the masterful way in which Lincoln wrote, not to the "righteousness" of what he said and stood for.

    As a large landowner, farmer, surgeon he also was a fervent state's rights man who joined the fight early even though he was in his thirties.

    Unable to further fight because of wounds, he used his doctoring skills on to assist the soldiers, but by 1863, after Gettysburg, he knew that the South could no longer win militarily. No matter, he continued to give his skill and fortune to the cause he believed in.

    By 1867, broken financially and with a large family, he moved to Ohio onto a small portion of his sister's farm he had bought her in 1859.

    It is my lot, I hope, in life to finally buy the family place back and take pride in what he did. Four generations are buried there and it is home.
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  3. BTW, I also enjoyed your article
    "Naming the War of 1861 - 1865".

    In my family, at least my mother's half, the war was called, "The war of Northern Agression".
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  4. Charles Temple SrDec 12, 2011 07:57 PM
    I see Mr C Meyer has commented in his usual style a few years ago. I keep wondering if he was drunk, or something, because I can make little, if any, sense of it. I must say that I have never, before this moment, heard, or read that anyone claimed that any Northern soldier fought for " the right of self government ". I have been told, by various means that Northern men fought to " Save the Union ", fought against slavery, fought for glory,plunder, adventure, hope of material gain ( some immigrants were promised already cleared land, with buildings on them ), and because they were forced to serve. I, until now, have never had anyone claim that they were interested in " Self Determination ", shoot they were obviously trying to stop the Southern States from doing just that. The idea that the Southern States were hypocritical because of slavery is preposterous. In the North as, in the South, black African slaves, even to one eighth black African blood, was considered as livestock, not quite human,etc. As repulsive as that is, it is also true. How many horses,cows/oxen etc were held in bondage in the North or South, and not one peep in protest from those that were allowed to bring their slaves for sale in Southern markets before they were forced to free them. The idea of slavery is an absolute abomination, but only black soldiers, and abolitionists ( What? 2% ) could claim that they fought to free the slaves. Perhaps Mr Meyer would be interested in doing some searches about what Charles Dickens had to say about his fantasy crusade to save a union by force of arms, or to free slaves by not freeing them. All these Republicans have to support their arguments seem to be the lies that they themselves have concocted. What did Grant have to say about emancipation and the war? If memory serves, he said that if he had known he was fighting to free slaves, he would have fought for the other side.
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