Posted on 11/19/2018 8:39:26 AM PST by EveningStar
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.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Gettysburg Address as recited by Jeff Daniels.
The more I think about it, the less I like the near saint-like reverence they expressed for “The Union”
Slavery was bad, and it’s good we ended it, but it was only a VEHICLE for something greater.
The war was for STATES RIGHTS, and we lost, and the Federal Government won.
Imagine if, instead of whether or not you could own slaves, the Federal government ordered you to do something else- like buy health insurance.
Sigh. I miss Madison, Patrick Henry, and Calhoun.
I wonder what Lincoln thinks of his work now.
May Patrick Claiborne rest in peace. Too bad the politicians did not heed him as closely as his men.
Beautiful speech, but the War Between the States had nothing to do with preventing government of, buy and for the people from perishing.
The Southern states had no desire to impose their will upon the North.
Either Lincoln knew he was being false in this, or he truly was crazy.
Which “States Rights” did the Buchanan Administration violate so badly that Secession was the only answer.
The Southern states had no desire to impose their will upon the North. Probably should not have fired on Fort Sumter then.
It’s funny, there’s a book I read (because I’m a wino) called “Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s”
It’s a bit wine centric, but only so much as the beverage is intertwined with the political objectives/issues of the day and that which were important to Jefferson and Hamilton.
I have to say, not much has changed since those days. The issues that divide this country are basically the same. It’s an easy an interesting read.
None. But it doesn’t matter.
The states and the people had an absolute and unalienable right to withdraw a ratification of the Constitution and withdraw from the Union. Still do.
Only tyranny could prevent the exercise of that right.
‘The war was for STATES RIGHTS, and we lost, and the Federal Government won.’
the future Confederacy was all for government fiat when it came to enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act in...
‘Probably should not have fired on Fort Sumter then.’
watch it...lots of people on this forum think Lincoln goaded them into it...
A characteristic of Lincoln was, especially after his first two years in office, in the words of Edwin Black (quoted in Ronald White’s The Eloquent President), his vanishing ego. By that he meant Lincoln’s reluctance to use personal pronouns.
Commenting on the Gettysburg Address White wrote:
“The address is full of first-person references, but every one is plural. Ten times Lincoln uses the plural we and three times us. . . . In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln says nothing of himself. At a first hearing or reading, we are aware of what is being said and not of who is saying it. Yet at a second or third hearing or reading, Lincoln’s character, the ethos or credibility, which is the first principle of Aristotle’s rhetoric, is everywhere present. His very reticence to speak about himself - how different from modern politicians - is what makes his voice by the end of the address so decisive.”
Get that, not a single personal pronoun in The Gettysburg Address. The Second Inaugural consisted of 701 words, 501 of which are one syllable. The Bible and theological language were used throughout. God is mentioned 14 times. The Bible is quoted 4 times and prayer is invoked 3 times. And yet, Lincoln used personal pronouns only twice as in “I trust” and “myself.” There were several uses of plural pronouns. White suggests it’s in poor taste to use the first person singular.
Note that “how different from modern politicians” above! In one speech Obama used a personal pronoun, “I,” “Me,” “Mine,” 199 times, or every 12 seconds. How far we’ve fallen.
‘The states and the people had an absolute and unalienable right to withdraw a ratification of the Constitution and withdraw from the Union. Still do.’
perhaps...but those same people had no inalienable right to seize and occupy Federal property by force, after having seceded, and then expect no retribution for it...
‘the future Confederacy was all for government fiat when it came to enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act in...’
in 1850...
Ten years later, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion and in turn the termination of pregnancy had become the most frequently performed operation on adults in the United States.
Soon, 1 out of every 3 American women were ending the life of their unborn babies.
Lincoln expressed the idea it was God's will that every drop of blood exacted from slaves by their masters must be matched by blood spilled on the battlefields of the war.
If true, how much more blood will have to be spilled to match that of innocents murdered by their mothers and fathers in this nation?
How then can any nation long endure such atrocity.
In which Mr. Lincoln, laboring under the butcher’s bill for a voluntary war to crush the original constitutional consensus, began the project of reformulating the USA as a project in messianic popular democracy.
In what part of the North is Fort Sumter?
State's right to do what?
The courts have ruled otherwise. At least in the way the Southern states chose to accomplish it.
The ownership part. It was the property of the federal government.
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