When I disagree with some aggrandizing fuss being made over some political celebrity, cause, event, or anniversary, I tend to keep my mouth shut. When I do open my yap to point out what I think should be obvious, it sometimes raises a stink.
So mostly it seems to be time wasted to pipe up to say, “Hey, but …” when the whole propagandized nation is waving flags, worshipping tyrants, or indulging in an uncritical emotional frenzy.
Thus I kept my mouth shut earlier this week as the media went into one of its periodic Honest Abe panegyrics re the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
But Jim Bovard, never one to be shy about such matters, says it right. The speech, and Lincoln, are still balderdash after all these years.
The only thing I really think is right about the Gettysburg Addy is a rather obscure fact that ought to be better known and puts our current Authoritah worship into perspective. On the day he gave that speech, the president of these united States was an afterthought. He wasn’t even the main speaker. That was Edward Everett.
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine an event organizer placing a Clinton, a Bush, or an Obama as just one more speaker on a slate of talkers? And basically treating him as an ordinary human being instead of acting like he’s some grand pasha or potentate?
I don’t disagree with anything Jim Bovard said, except for his claim that “Lincoln’s rhetoric cannot be judged apart from the actions he authorized to enforce his ‘ideals’.” It most certainly can. Despite his assertion to the contrary, Bovard was writing only about Lincoln (and his generals), not about the speech itself. And it’s a damn fine speech.
I find the content of the Gettysburg Address to be collectivist and vile. And, Lincoln repeated the lie that a “civil war” was going on at the time. It wasn’t- a peaceable secession was being violently opposed, and the aggressors were being violently resisted- the Confederacy wasn’t fighting for control of the USA’s government.
Kent, I don’t disagree (although I will note that the Confederacy fired the first shots in that “peaceable secession”), and I absolutely agree that it was the South’s right to withdraw from the Union, whether its reasons were good or bad. I merely said that I thought it was an excellent speech, and I stand by that.
It’s interesting Bovard didn’t mention Mencken’s right-on-target comment about the speech:
“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history… the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. 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.”
Let’s not be too impressed that Lincoln strung some lies together to cause an emotional effect. Hitler did the same.
[…the Confederacy fired the first shots in that “peaceable secession”]
Yes – at a fort that promised to bombard any ship passing into the harbor that did not pay excise taxes to a completely different country. Yes, the Southerners should have waited until the bombardment actually happened, but let’s not be too hard on them. Everything is relative; just consider what the North did to the South in that war. Oh, and the secession certainly was peaceable; it had happened some time before the firing on Sumter, which was done in response to Lincoln’s subsequent threats. The so-called “Civil War” was not the prevention of a secession, which was already a done deal, but the invasion and conquest of a foreign nation.
I wrote a little article about Lincoln:
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle588-20100919-06.html
Probably using some words differently, I would say that Lincoln was not an honest man but was a great – i.e., successful – president. Jefferson Davis was an honest man but a lousy – very unsuccessful – president.
One of the places where martial law was declared was Maryland, where the current state song was written by a Confederate sympathizer. Some of the lines go “The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland my Maryland…Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore.” N.B.: They don’t sing that verse at the Preakness.
Lincoln successfully maneuvered the South into firing the first shot, a ploy that has stood us in such good stead that many wars have been started, or claimed to have been started, in that way. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-tojo-doctrine/
His Gettysburg Address has at least one high profile supporter. BHO, God bless his soul, saw need for only one minor change. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/11/19/Obama-Removes-God-From-Gettysburg-Address
I do think that immediately after Appomattox there was no reason for Southerners to kill him, but there was for those who wanted to rape the South afterwards. The perfect setting for such an assassination was a stage show.
The U.S. Grant quote in the Borepatch article where he wishes for the death of an entire class of people sounds eerily like Oprah. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/11/15/oprah-racists-have-die-racism-end#ixzz2kp1wIMph
Now, now … I do think we ought to show a little respect when important anniversaries roll around.
For example, tomorrow (22-Nov) is the 50th anniversary of the death of a very great man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
Certainly noteworthy. And I can’t fault those who want to give a little nod to Aldous Huxley, either.
Please don’t take anything I’ve said here in the wrong way: I absolutely support the right of the Confederacy to secede (then and, for that matter, today), and am not among Lincoln’s hagiographers. His actions did irreparable harm to the Constitution, and paved the way for the far greater destruction of what this country was all about than would have the loss of a handful of recalcitrant states. But the Gettysburg Address was brilliant poetry.
Shel, are you suggesting that JW Booth was a tool of northerners who wanted a particularly harsh form of war reparations? Do you have any evidence for that? It is well documented that Booth was a confederate sympathizer; why would he play directly into northerners’ hands? Or are you saying he was duped into it? Again, any evidence for this?
Another brilliant move by Lincoln was the issuance of the still internationally acclaimed Emancipation Proclamation, which emancipated no one.
Laird, I have no evidence; I was just going with my gut. In trying to look stuff up, I ran across the following article: http://lincoln-assassination.com/15/a-missed-opportunity-%C2%AD-bill-oreillys-killing-lincoln-review-by-ed-steers/
It certainly seems well thought out, despite attributing near saint status to Stanton. If the original documentation is all available, then the investigative evidence put out is a far cry from the product of the Warren Commission. Without going further and reading the referenced book, the article seems on the surface to make sense.
Several things had triggered my gut reaction. Up until Appomattox, the South had a motive to stir up as much trouble as possible. After Appomattox, the only logical reason to assassinate Lincoln was to stir up hatred against Southerners and make Reconstruction as Draconian as possible. Making it a stage show fits this scenario perfectly. Having a body burned beyond recognition also dovetails nicely. When I visited Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, I learned that the conspirators imprisoned there claimed the original plot was to kidnap and when Lee surrendered, they assumed the plot was off. While these are self serving statements, the latter part in particular is believable to me. So we are left with a case of essentially blind hatred or some very intelligent people behaving very logically. As the evidence seems to support the former, I have to say it’s more likely. My gut is still doing a little something, but that’s a personal problem. Anyway, thanks for spurring me to look into it further.
Yeah, I vote for blind hatred too. Same as motivated the attack on Sumter.
I hate to say it, but I don’t know if assassination ever makes any sense, at least at that level, since it generates counterproductive outcomes. It’s unfortunate because the people in question usually deserve it, due to all the blood on their hands. Yeah, Lyndon Johnson (or his cronies) got away with it, but I doubt anyone without control of the propaganda apparatus is going to have as much luck.
[the still internationally acclaimed Emancipation Proclamation]
At the time it was panned and considered a fraud, which it was. If you ever hear anyone “acclaiming” it, ask them if they have actually read the thing, and challenge them to do so.
If you want to get your blood boiling by reading statements of union generals, try Robert Hawes’ book (I helped him edit it):
http://www.amazon.com/Nation-Indivisible-Study-Secession-Constitution/dp/1596820918