I’m just finishing Jon Meacham’s biography on Abraham Lincoln, And There Was Light. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend it! A few of the lines from the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the National Cemetery really got to me. But before we get what got to me, were you aware that prior to the President’s speech, Edward Everett, the best-known orator of the time, gave a two-hour discourse without notes?!
Now, I’ve given sermons in churches (in excess of a thousand I suppose), talks to community service groups, and homilies at weddings, funerals, and baby dedications wherein I’ve been preceded by others meandering through their way to the point. They say that people’s attention span in Lincoln’s day was not what it is today. But two hours? Even if it was a speech for the ages, I’d have chewed my finger nails down past the cuticles after the first hour.
To his credit, Everett wrote to Lincoln afterward, “I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”
That’s right, Lincoln’s legendary speech was 272 words long (compared to Everett’s 13,000!) and took just over two minutes! It comes as no surprise that the president’s political opponents mocked his remarks as “silly, flat, and dishwatery.” Some people can’t recognize greatness even with a flashlight and a map! One such newspaper called “The Patriot & Union” retracted their critique 150 years later. Better late than never, I guess.
Back to the lines in his speech that recently bowled me over like a “sneaker wave” that comes out of nowhere and knocks you off your feet while obliviously wading ankle deep on the shallow shore before you can avoid its inescapable energy and drags you into the water.
The first one that pulls me into the deep is where Lincoln has the audacity to say at the dedication of the cemetery, “We cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”
Wow, he reminds us three times in one sentence what we “cannot” do! That’s a different take on presidential politics of our time, does it not?
Sir, you come all the way from Washington to dedicate a cemetery and then admit that even you, the President of the United States of America, have no actual power to dedicate it in the first place. You’re the most powerful person in the country, if not the world, and only possess but “poor power to add or detract” from what the soldiers under your orders did and died at the site?
At another time Lincoln said, “I may not be a great man—I know I am not a great man—and perhaps it is better that it is so—for it makes me rely upon One who is great and who has the wisdom and power to lead us safely through this great trial.”
God, give us leaders who realize where actual power lies and know how to attribute it to those who’ve earned it by their sacrifice, rather than bloviate every time they have a microphone in front of their face!
The other sound bite of the speech that sweeps me off my feet comes directly after the previous wave. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Our sixteenth president downplays himself and gives others the stage. He demonstrates his indifference to his own legacy. He speculates that posterity won’t, and probably shouldn’t remember him or any of them there that day. The heroes are those who fought there for the union of the country. They’re the ones worthy to be remembered. It’s their legacy that matters, not those who make speeches about them. The irony is this speechmaker and his speech are remembered by pretty much every American, not to mention people around the world 163 years later! Maybe legacy isn’t something you carve out for yourself through fame and fortune. Maybe being remembered has more to do with the content of a person’s character than the color of their statues.
O Lord, give us leaders disinterested in being remembered for their supposed exploits! Where are the men and women today whose depth of concern could not be further shallowed about having their names emblazoned on buildings, boats, and bills!
It’s worth the 2-minutes that it takes you to listen to the entire speech. Tell us what part of it knocks you off your feet. Listen to it here.
barney wiget 