"What lessons should Americans today draw from the
Gettysburg Address?"
By Christel Swasey
In 1863, at the close of the War Between the States, President
Abraham Lincoln stood to dedicate a graveyard at the site of the Battle of
Gettysburg. The spilled blood of over 51,000
men from that three-day battle, combined with the war's other battles, totaled
over 600,000 and stood as a testimony: America's
founding, "conceived in liberty," set up "four score and seven
years" earlier, had been put to a terrible test.
Yes, America had been "conceived in liberty." But both
the North and the South claimed to be fighting for liberty during the War
Between the States. Whose interpretation of liberty would
prevail, or should prevail?
The President of
the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, had said,
“The North was mad and blind; it would not
let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you
acknowledge our right to self government. We
are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.” He had said, "all we ask
is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now
attempt our subjugation by arms." Many Southerners had no slaves, did not
believe in slavery, and were simply fighting for independence from the North --and
its perceived or real abuses.
At the same time, the North said that its fight was for freedom,
too-- for the freedom of human beings enslaved in the American South, and for
the reclaiming of the Southern states that had seceded, back into the Union.
Long before Gettysburg, President Lincoln had said, "This government cannot endure permanently
half slave, half free." He knew
that both the Northern and the Southern interpretations of liberty could not
exist within one nation. He had pointed
out a decade earlier that "Most governments have been
based, practically, on the denial of
the equal rights of men," but he explained that though "We began by
declaring that all men are created equal... now... we have run down to the
other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a 'sacred right of
government'. These principles cannot
stand together."
Lincoln had also explained
that, "When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs
another man, that is more than self-government; that is despotism."
At Gettysburg, when Lincoln
said that our nation was "conceived in liberty" he could not have
meant that anyone is at liberty to do anything at any time, including hurting
or enslave another. He meant that any
American's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of property ended when that
property happened to be another
person. He meant that one person's right
to swing his fist ended where another's nose began. It would not be right for any group-- whether
of a certain race, or of a certain wealth, or even of a larger numerical majority, to rule the land; only good and fair laws should rule. (If the majority ruled, for example, then 49%
of the people would be at the mercy of 51% of the people, and the 49% would have no rights at all. This was why the founders warned against pure
democracy, and set up a Constitution that guaranteed every citizen representative,
but law-based, government. Article
IV of the Constitution promises: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this
union a republican form of
government.")
However, good and fair federal laws concerning slavery were absolutely missing
in America. They didn't fully show up until
after the war, with the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Lincoln saw that while the South would have been justified in seceding or
seeking independence for many reasons, the freedom to continue to practice
slavery was not one of them. He appealed
to people's religious conscience, to a higher law than the then-current
American law. Even though there wasn't
yet any Emancipation Proclamation or federal law against slavery when the war
began, Lincoln's conscience (and many
others' consciences) felt slavery was immoral, especially in a country that was
"dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal."
The Gettysburg Address was, in essence, a request. President Abraham Lincoln pleaded with the
living to continue the "unfinished
work" that the founders and the recently killed soldiers had "nobly
advanced". He pleaded that the
living would "resolve" that "these
dead shall not have died in vain,"
and that the American nation would have a "new birth of freedom."
Today, we are still "engaged in a great civil war"-- not
using bayonets and guns, but using the tools of our political process, and the
resources of technology, media, persuasion and communication. We debate and fight over the same principles
that caused our forefathers to eventually pick up arms.
Differing interpretations
of liberty still cause contention in our land:
Is the government's right to seek terrorists, or a person's right to
privacy from unreasonable search and seizure, a more pressing freedom? Is the woman's right to choose to have an abortion,
or the unborn American's right to be alive, a more pressing freedom? Is the homosexuals' right to marry and have
children, or their future children's right to be raised by a father and a mother,
a more pressing freedom? Is the state's
supervision of education, or a teacher's creativity and autonomy in the classroom,
a more pressing freedom? Is a
publisher's right to produce child pornography, or a child's right to live in a
society free of it, a more pressing freedom?
Is the federal government's protection of the environment on disputed
lands, or the state's right to its documented ownership of that land, a more
pressing freedom? Is local autonomy or a
highly regulated and standardized system, a more pressing cause?
Americans will always struggle with, and will have to fight in one way or
another to define and preserve, the reality behind the word liberty. "Brave men, living and dead," have
and do by their struggles "consecrate" this land, just as President
Lincoln said, whether they are the Americans of 1863, of 1776 or of 2014.
Sources:
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/the-object-of-government.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv
http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/10causes.html
http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htm
http://www.army.mil/gettysburg/statistics/statistics.html
http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/