President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address 151 Years ago today.
What did it mean, what should we take away from it.
In context it is a speech to rally the Nation and bolster a flagging will to fight. The meaning of the war, "To Save the Union" had been changed into a Holy crusade to "Set other men free", yet this was not taken to heart by most of the population. The draft had been instituted that Summer, and riots opposing it burned hot only days after the great battle in July. New York City urned against compulsory service, the mob taking out its anger on black men in the city. So grave the disruption in New York that Federal troops had to be brought in the quell the violence and restore order.
What can we draw from that time? In school we are taught that established single point narrative of slavery as the sole cause for the war. Historians, authors who should know better or refuse to know parrot this narrative. If we look at primary and secondary source material from the time such as personal letters, essays, publications such as Harper's Weekly we see a number of reasons, mostly corresponding to a shift in the economy through industrialization and tariff policy. You can see it in the editorials North and South, and in the political cartoons.
This is not something new, it had been brewing slowly for a number of decades. Andrew Jackson addressed it during his presidency, the threat off succession from South Carolina. His force of personality and known character carried behind his words when he said regarding the matter "
if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the
United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on
to the first tree I can find." That was in 1832, and the matter was tariffs enabling economic disparity between Northern manufacturing and Southern raw materials. This was the beginning of the modern era for America, moving from agrarian to industrial, from slave based labor in the South to immigrant based labor in the Northern States. The conditions faced by immigrant labor were the force behind modern labor law.
No, I am not going to provide a list of sources. You my fellow American need to go out and learn about your country, its history and the grit it has taken to allow you the freedom you have and the effort required of you to keep it. As the Iroquois say, "for the next seven generations."
Coming full circle, it is a great speech. Short, moving, on point.
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| After completing the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln, center, without hat. |
