How does lincoln describe the united states

The result is that "Liberty" and "God" are, in effect, the only capitalized words, since none of the sentence-starting words would normally be capitalized. Why does Lincoln incarnate liberty in this way and what does it mean to be "conceived in Liberty"?

Whenever the interpretation of Lincoln is at issue, the Bible is a good starting place. Psalms speaks of being conceived in sin: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

In Luke , the angel tells Mary, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son," and in Matthew , the angel assures Joseph that "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. According to Lincoln's redaction, the new nation was conceived not in sin or sorrow but in liberty, although given the use that humans make of their liberty, there might not be much difference between the terms.

Beneath the beautiful thought that the nation was conceived in the pure womb of liberty there lurks the afterthought evoked by the distant resonance of Psalm 51's conceived in sin. That psalm, known as the Miserere, is the most famous of the seven penitential psalms.

In it, a contrite King David prays for a clean heart and a renewed spirit after his unjust taking of Bathsheba, the wife of the humble Uriah. The list of 41 generations the "begats" is interrupted only twice, once to interject that "David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias" and then to mention that 14 generations later the Israelites were "carried away to Babylon.

William Faulkner, in Absalom, Absalom! In his very frank letter to his dearest friend, Joshua Speed, Lincoln uses a variant of "conceived in sin" when he declares that the Kansas-Nebraska Act "was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. John Channing Briggs, in his wonderful book, Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered , stresses the obscurity of Lincoln's phrasing: "Certainly, if one presses the metaphor to its sensible limit, the nation had parentage; but the manner and precise timing of its conception Leon Kass, in his admirable speech, " The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Reinterpretation of the American Founding ," tries once again to plumb the mysteries of the nation's generation.

He develops three scenarios. Perhaps Lincoln means to suggest that, just as a child might be conceived in love, the nation was conceived in liberty. Liberty, or maybe love of liberty, was the seminal passion that eventually produced the nation. Or perhaps "conceived in Liberty" indicates that the idea of a new nation was freely formed and chosen. While the Declaration itself insists on the force of "necessity," Lincoln instead highlights the operation of free will; the nation was conceived in an act of liberty.

One final possibility is that Lincoln means to refer further back, even centuries back, into the colonial period. Alexis de Tocqueville, for instance, argues that the spirit of liberty was present from the first in the English colonies. He explains how the aristocratic liberty of the mother country assumed a new more democratic form in the New World. If so, then British liberty was the womb the Latin is matrix within which the new nation gestated.

These three speculations are not, in fact, incompatible with one another: A love of liberty, long present among the colonists, did flare up in one decisive, freely chosen act, transforming British subjects into founders. The organic, "gentle" character of Lincoln's account of the nation's origins suggests a further concern. Perhaps Lincoln did not want to come anywhere near words like "revolution" or "independence" while in the midst of putting down "a gigantic Rebellion.

The secessionists were in no way comparable to the American revolutionaries. Lincoln didn't have time in this speech to explain the theoretical difference, as he did at length in other speeches, especially his First Inaugural.

Instead, he found euphemisms for the American Revolution like "brought forth" and "conceived in Liberty. Given that he was resisting those who wanted a further separation, it was not the time to praise the dissolution of political bands. After liberty, the other feature of the founding that is highlighted is equality. Lincoln says the nation is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. As in the moment of christening or baptism, the infant nation is placed on a certain path.

Although Lincoln quotes accurately from the Declaration, he puts his own gloss on it, famously introducing some key changes. The Declaration speaks of equality as a truth held to be "self-evident" by the American people. They knew that this self-evident truth was unfortunately not evident to everyone the world over, but they expected that, in time, the scales would fall from the eyes of others temporarily blinded by false teachings, such as that about the divine right of kings.

A self-evident truth is an axiom. An axiom doesn't require proof and, in fact, it can't be proved. You just see it or you don't. According to the Declaration, human equality is like that; it is axiomatic. This is the essential truth of the human condition. This foundational truth is not invalidated by the harsh fact that most human beings, in most times and places, have lived under political orders that violate their natural rights, slavery being the most dramatic instance.

According to the Declaration, despotic regimes and unjust institutions are illegitimate. It follows that people may exercise their right of revolution in order to establish new governments founded upon the consent of the governed and respectful of the individuals' pre-existing natural rights. Although there are plenty of places where Lincoln uses the orthodox language of "axiom" or "self-evident" to describe the primary, capital "T" truths of the Declaration, his most famous formulation, here in the Gettysburg Address, calls human equality a "proposition.

A proposition, unlike an axiom, requires a proof. That's why one must be "dedicated" to it. It's a theorem that must be demonstrated in practice. That Lincoln was well aware of the distinction between axioms and propositions is evident from a letter he wrote to H. Pierce in , where he says:. One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.

The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. What might explain Lincoln's shift from one Euclidean term to the other? It's not that Lincoln suddenly doubts the truth of human equality. It's rather that he wants to highlight the needfulness of translating an abstract truth into concrete political form. As early as the Lyceum Address, Lincoln described the founders as experimental scientists or mathematicians drawn to an unproven proposition.

The current crisis, however, was more severe. At the time of the founding, there was general agreement that all were created equal, even if there was no political ability on the part of the very weak federal government to do much about the domestic institution of slavery in the states. Nonetheless, all then understood that slavery was an evil; even those who argued that slavery was necessary and there were many of those at least called it "a necessary evil.

Led by John C. Calhoun, Southerners had taken to openly repudiating the truths of the Declaration, calling equality a "self-evident lie" and slavery a "positive good. In the s, as the crisis of the "house divided" escalated, Lincoln argued that the crisis had arisen because a substantial portion of the American people had lost sight of the truth on which their own rights depended.

We see here, perhaps, that the language of mathematics is not perfectly suited to or congruent with politics, since political truths depend on being held in the heart as true.

Thus, the Gettysburg Address superimposes religious language dedicate, consecrate, hallow on its Euclidean substrate. In his opening paragraph, in 30 words, Lincoln has performed an act of remembrance. His description of "our fathers" is meant to make his audience reverential. But, at the same time, the generative imagery conveys the message that each successive cohort of Americans is essential to the maturation or completion of the founding.

The necessary proof is ongoing. It's up to us to live out the timeless truth to which the nation has been pledged. With this single sentence, Lincoln formed the nation's self-understanding, a self-understanding that unites filial piety with progress.

Action here and now is mandated by fidelity to the past. Lincoln's political stance manages to combine liberal elements with profoundly conservative elements. The gloss he puts on the Declaration of Independence thus leads directly to the next paragraph and its opening word: "Now. He doesn't want the audience to stray outside the bounds of the idea he so carefully shaped there. What is at stake is the survival of that new nation that sought to combine liberty and equality.

And more than that: At stake is the very possibility of political life based on such premises. Lincoln enlarges the stakes beyond national survival. The failure of the American experiment would constitute the failure of popular government altogether.

It is striking how similar this language in the Gettysburg Address is to the language of Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session. There he asserted that,. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals Our popular government has often been called an experiment.

These lengthier passages, addressed to Congress in the first months of the war, help to explicate the more condensed, poetic rendering at Gettysburg, where Lincoln, speaking to a grieving public, conveyed the purpose of the war. This "great lesson of peace" must be midwifed by the war power of the government.

With a sublimity that may never be surpassed, Lincoln pleads for public support to stay the course. As Lincoln understood, there was a perverse logic that led from the theoretical denial of equality, as expressed in the South's heretical view that slavery was just, to the denial of majority rule, as expressed in the South's attempted secession.

The Declaration's truths are intertwined. 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.

Opinion was generally divided along political lines, with Republican journalists praising the speech as a heartfelt, classic piece of oratory and Democratic ones deriding it as inadequate and inappropriate for the momentous occasion. In the years to come, the Gettysburg Address would endure as arguably the most-quoted, most-memorized piece of oratory in American history. The world at once noted what he said, and will never cease to remember it.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late That honor went to Edward Everett, a In the first days of July , two great armies converged at the small town of Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania.

Begun as a skirmish between Union cavalry and Confederate infantry scouting for supplies, the battle escalated into one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Jane Addams was a peace activist and a leader of the settlement house movement in America. As one of the most distinguished of the first generation of college-educated women, she rejected marriage and motherhood in favor of a lifetime commitment to the poor and Lee had invaded the More than , Irishmen, most of whom were recent immigrants and many of whom were not yet U.

Some joined out of loyalty to their new home. Others hoped that such a conspicuous display of patriotism might put a stop to Ironically, the world remembers what our sixteenth president said, but do we remember the actions of those who fought at Gettysburg? Lincoln points to them, and challenges the living. Are we prepared to heed their example to do what is necessary to advance the founding ideals of the Declaration of Independence?

Remember, the Gettysburg Address is a wartime speech. Lincoln is steeling his contemporaries for the many battles, burdens, and responsibilities still ahead. The Union won the Civil War. Slavery ended. Lincoln foresaw this. Civil War Video. Why do Lincoln's iconic words at Gettysburg still matter to each and every one of us? Prager University.

Ours is no exception. Topic s :. Related Videos. View All Related Resources.