9UNP1136_Richard_Haven

- Let's go ahead and get started. I am Kari Borne. I am from the Office of Continuing Education at UW Whitewater, and our presenter today is Dr. Richard Haven. He's a professor emeritus of communication, former interim dean and associate dean of the College of Arts and Communication, and one of the 135 scholars who helped determine the 100 greatest American speeches of the 20th century. Dr. Haven is a regular guest expert on WFAW's Morning Magazine, Wisconsin Public Radio's Ideas Network and NBC 15 in Madison. Dr. Haven's lecture today is titled "Reinventing America-- Lincoln's Gettysburg Address." 
Welcome. 
[APPLAUSE]
 
- Thank you. It's nice to be back. Everyone hear me OK? We're good? All right. Very good. As Kari mentioned, you're stuck with me for two weeks. 

The reason for that is-- many of you have probably visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. When you walk up those steps and go inside, you looked to one side and engraved is the Gettysburg Address, and on the other side is the Second Inaugural. These are Lincoln's two greatest speeches, and both had significant impact on America. Today, I want to focus on the Gettysburg Address-- next week, the Second Inaugural. To understand the Gettysburg Address, you have to understand a bit about the Battle of Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg took three days, so Kari said I get one hour per day. I'll make it briefer. I want to look at that battle just a little bit in order to set the stage for looking at the speech. You'll notice my title for today, working off of reinventing America, is the battle that saved America and the speech that changed America. And I think there's truth in both of those statements. 

Let's look at the battle for just a second. Just over 150 years ago, two great armies met at a little town-- 2,500 people, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania-- they met somewhat by accident. Over three days-- July 1, 2, and 3, 1863-- they engaged in a very, very significant battle, the worst battle in the Civil War, and more likely, the worst battle for loss of Americans in our history. This is the story of that battle and that speech. Here's what happened. Over those three days, nearly 8,000 Americans died in just three days. Think about how many Americans we lost in over 10 years in Afghanistan. Nearly twice as many, in just three days. Hard to imagine that kind of devastation. At the same time, there were somewhere between 46 and 51,000 casualties. 

The union kept pretty good records, the Confederacy did not. It was a little bit harder to estimate that, but we know from records that we've been able to find that it's somewhere in between. We mentioned the number of dead. More than 26,000 were wounded. And of course then, another 12,000 were captured or missing. When we talk of casualties, we're talking about all three of those. An amazing number. In the battle, Lee lost a third of his general officers. And Pickett, on that third day when he made the charge-- famous now for Pickett's Charge-- he lost 70% of his men. You've all heard of Lord Alfred Tennyson poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade"? 

They lost 40%. It wasn't even close, the devastation that happened on that day. When you think about it, you begin to understand just how gruesome and awful this battle was, and its impact on people, and how gruesome and awful the war had become. No one expected this. Both the North and the South thought the war would last no more than two to six months. First day of battle, people rode out to have picnics while they watched it. Obviously, it didn't quite work out that way, and it became a long and devastating war. We're going to look at the speech today about Gettysburg. Next week, we'll look at the whole war and its impact-- how many Americans died, were wounded, and so on. And then we'll look at Lincoln's Second Inaugural because by then, he's talking about what's coming next. 

He knows by that time that the war is won. Now he begins to focus on how do we reunify the nation. That's the Battle of Gettysburg. That photo, incidentally, is from the battle. It's one of the few probably taken a day or two after the battle was over. Now, some odd facts about Gettysburg. 37,000 plus rifles were left laying on the battlefield. Of those, 24,000 approximately were still loaded. Of that group, 6,000 had one round in the barrel, 12,000 had two rounds, and another 6,000 or so had three to 10 rounds. Why would that be? 

You remember, most of the guns were a single load. You had to put the ball in, then jam it down. Soldiers would often begin so excited they would forget to fire, and they would put another ball in and jam it down. And that's why they found three to 10 in there they never fired. They just kept loading. But we have to understand the chaos of the battlefield, how awful it was. The Confederate Wagon Train-- after the battle, carrying the wounded, it stretched for 17 miles. One of the little sad side facts-- 3,000 plus horses died at Gettysburg. Now that created a problem at Gettysburg. You have somewhere near 8,000 human bodies laying in that battlefield. 

3,000 dead horses and a lot of wounded walking around. And this created a situation in Gettysburg which was a mess. Because remember, it was July. It was hot. You can start to imagine it wasn't very pretty. And the governor of Pennsylvania figured, we have to do something about this. This is not good. That brings us to the occasion of the Gettysburg Address. At the time of the Civil War, the states were viewed as more important, at least in their own eyes, than the federal government-- the opposite of today. The decision to have this event at Gettysburg was organized first by the governor of Pennsylvania, who was up for re-election and he needed to have a good event there to help them out, and then the other northern governors, who were going to work with him, who had lost men in the battle. 

They put the program together. And part of it was to help with the burial. The first thing they did was they gathered all the horses and burned them. So they went from rotting flesh to smoking flesh, not very nice. And then of course, they engaged in trying to, in some cases, re-bury because there had been some burial right after the battle, but they were just very shallow graves and so they needed to re-bury especially the Union soldiers at that time. They didn't do nearly as much with the Confederate soldiers in terms of how they buried them. They decided they ought to have an event for this and they ought to commemorate the battle. Because the battle, in so many ways, although it was a victory for the Union, it was not a decisive victory. At the same time, there had not been a lot of victories for the Union by that time. And they thought it was good to talk about this, and Lincoln thought that was important. 

And so when they put this event together to help pay for and then commemorate the battle, they thought, well what should they do? And one of them was they needed to have a good piece of entertainment. In the 19th century, the best entertainment was the public speech, the orators. And the best orators were usually statesman or politicians and preachers. What held the church together was a good sermon. And if you study American history, you know that the preachers could go on awhile. That's what you did on Sunday. The statesmen, going back to Daniel Webster and Calhoun and others, were known for their oratory. And so they invited the best orator of their age, Edward Everett, to give the speech. His was the main attraction. 

He was going to speak for at least two hours and he was there to entertain, and that was his job. But he needed at least a month to prepare. And so they also decided they should invite the president to give a few appropriate remarks. That was not an insult. That was fairly typical. This was the governor's event. And the president was thought to be there to do the dedication, so it was not an insult to him. He was still the center of attention. And he would not have been disappointed because he would not have wanted to give the oration. And so Lincoln saw the opportunity and agreed to come. 

Now when he agreed to come, his aides scheduled the train for 6 o'clock the morning of the speech. The speech would be in the afternoon. About 120 miles from Gettysburg, from Washington DC. Lincoln said, oh, no. He knew he'd have to change trains twice to get there. Sounds like flying today. He had to change trains twice. And he was afraid that if the trains screwed it up, he wouldn't make it in time. And in fact, it is. If he had done what they wanted, he would not have been there in time and we would have no Gettysburg Address. 

He traveled the night before, the day before, arriving in the afternoon and then stayed overnight. And so there is Lincoln, there. That tells you a couple things. One, he wanted to be there. And two, what we know about Lincoln, he was prepared to be there. When we look at the speech, we judge a speech, we look at the artistry and the impact, especially great speeches. When I helped to evaluate the great American speeches of the 20th century, we judged them in these two areas and then ranked them and rated them. So we look at artistry, we look at how the speech is organized. We look at the word choice, and we look at the message. Then we look at the impact, and of course, the impact is on the audiences, and there are always multiple audiences. 

We'll see later that the most important audience for this speech was the historical audience. Well, I get ahead of myself. So on that occasion, here's Edward Everett. He's the main speaker. He's the big show. And Lincoln's up there at the podium with him and sits there for two hours as Edward Everett re-fights the entire battle. Now this was not a bad thing. Lincoln's two top aides who traveled with him, his secretaries, always-- in their account of the Gettysburg celebration, they focus more on Everett than they did on President Lincoln. That's his aides. And they praised Edward Everett immensely. 

He gave a walloping good oratory. And he did it by memory. He took the audience, and there were about 20,000 people there, into the battle and helped them to understand what really happened that day. Boy, what he could have done with PowerPoint. Again, I noticed he was organized by and there it is. Now, it's a dedication of the new cemetery. Lincoln rose and gave a speech that lasted only 272 words long, about three minutes. Remember, this is a dedication speech. It's supposed to be short. But you should know that the minister who gave the invocation spoke for twice as long. 

We don't remember his invocation, do we? We don't remember Edward Everett's oration. We do remember Lincoln's words. Lincoln prepared this speech because he felt he needed to say something to the people there, the people in the North, and the world. Why was this battle so bloody? Why was this war going on for so long, and what difference did it make? You have to remember that there were undercurrents at the time-- remember, this is still Lincoln's first term, and he's not terribly popular at this point-- there are undercurrents among people in the North to just say, end it. Let the darn South go. Who cares about them? We can have a great nation without them. 

He was fighting the internal battle to keep on moving towards what he hoped would be a victory. So when we look at structure, the structure is very apparent-- past, present, future. In the past section, in the very beginning of the speech, he has those famous opening words, "four score and seven years ago," which you know is 87 years. Doesn't that sound a lot better than saying 87 years ago? So it was eloquent, straightforward, a little bit 19th century, but that's OK. And it starts the speech. But notice what he says about the Declaration of Independence. We come back to the message. It's one of the more important pieces of the message that he gives the audience that day. In the present, he talks about the ongoing war and the need to finish it. 

And then in the future, he talks about government of the people surviving. So let's go into the style a little bit. The style it was interesting because I think it's the word choice that we remember as much as anything about the Gettysburg Address. I mentioned the "four score and seven years ago," but when you look closely at the speech, there are no wasted words. You can't say, you know, you could cut that sentence out and it would be OK. It's so complete. The ideas flow so well. And the words were very precise. There was an old myth that floated around that Lincoln wrote this speech on the train on the way, on the back of an envelope. That is baloney. 

What do we know about Lincoln? He was a very good student, self-taught, he read a lot, and he took a lot of time with his speeches. Now, my guess is that Lincoln had been putting together these ideas for quite awhile, and looking for an opportunity to say them. And Gettysburg happened. And the cemetery dedication happened, and now he had his opportunity. He obviously adapted the ideas to include what happened there at Gettysburg. But you'll notice in the speech that it's really not specifically about Gettysburg. It's about all the sacrifices made by the soldiers to preserve freedom. One of the interesting things about the Civil War-- the Southern army all spoke English and came from a much more homogeneous background, and they fought for disunion. The northern army had many more immigrants, spoke many different languages. 

They were men who went into and units that went into the battles, including Gettysburg, and spoke no English. They spoke German. They spoke Norwegian. They spoke French. They were of different backgrounds. And so here you have an army that's lacking in unity fighting for unity. It's a bizarre little aspect of the Civil War. Next thing I would say about the words-- besides being concise and brief, they were poetic. It does read, at times, like a poem. If you read a poem, you know that it comes back in on itself, and the Gettysburg Address does that. 

It often uses repetition in a very effective way. Lincoln repeats the beginning, much like when he says, "government of the people, for the people, by the people," repeating "people." I think that adds to the power of the speech. The language-- very appropriate, it's respectful. He's very respectful of what happened there at Gettysburg. And I love his line about the men who gave their last full measure. He didn't say "the men who died." The men who gave their last full measure. He didn't say, "the last full measure of life." He doesn't have to. 

What a beautiful way to elevate what they did. And again, that language is very respectful, but also very concise. Finally, though, it's interesting-- in a sense, the Gettysburg Address is of a different style than what was appropriate, or believed to be appropriate, in the 19th century. Edward Everett gave a two-hour oration. It's very flowery. If you've ever seen a true oration, an oratory, it's not what we call plain English. It's more what's called a declamation. He memorizes and then he entertains. This was plain English. This was a very straightforward speech. 

And in a sense, he did here what Mark Twain would do in writing, in the novel. He would change the way people wrote, in the case of Twain. Lincoln would change the way speakers would speak. And this was like the last occasion, according to Gary Wills, who wrote a very detailed analysis of the speech, that the oration would be regarded as the appropriate way to give a speech. So there's a change in the style. Most important, we look at the message. And what's amazing about this speech is what Lincoln does in such a quick amount of time. First of all, he redefines the American Revolution and elevates the Declaration of Independence to the center point of the revolution. Now, those of you who have read the Declaration know that the words of the Declaration of Independence, which is incidentally the document we know best from the American Revolution. But when it was produced at the time, it was a piece of propaganda designed to justify the act of separation on July 2. 

It's always kind of odd that we celebrate July 4 because it's July 2 when they actually separated. So you should be celebrating on July 2, but we kind of decided we like July 4, and went with the Declaration of Independence. But it was just simply a piece of propaganda-- and I don't use that in the negative term-- to persuade others this was a good idea. And the Preamble, which contains those famous words "all men are created equal" was taken for granted. It was simply the Preamble. The message of the Declaration was the list of grievances against the King. They wanted to prove he was a jerk, and they wanted to prove it to two groups-- the Americans who were not yet sold on the revolution, and the French, who they needed to bring their Navy over. When the Constitution is written, they're not really referring to the Declaration of Independence in the 1780s. They're putting together their own document. The founding fathers were not focused on that at all. 

But Lincoln was. And Lincoln saw what Jefferson said as kind of the ideal that the Constitution had failed to meet, and he took those words especially, "all men are created equal." Incidentally, the term "men" at the time referred to all people. He took it and elevated it, and made it the center point of the revolution. Well, the audience accepted that, and we've accepted it since, even though it wasn't exactly what really happened. Lincoln redefined the American Revolution and he elevated the Declaration. And he took Thomas Jefferson and made him by far the most important founding father. Next, he made the soldiers' sacrifice meaningful. And by that I mean he said, "they would have died in vain if you don't finish the war." So he puts a great burden on the audience and on the Union. 

They can only be honored on that battlefield if we finish the war. And so, of course, that's what he's most concerned about, that they finish the war. Why does he fire so many generals? Because they don't finish the battle. George Meade was the general in charge of the Union Army at Gettysburg. And while the Union Army held and won the battle, Meade refused to pursue Lee when he was at his weakest and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. That drove Lincoln nuts, and that's why whether it was McCullen or Meade or others, he was always looking for that general who would finish the deed. He felt that the war went on much too long because the generals kept backing off. Now, he found that general, didn't he? Ulysses Grant. 

It's interesting to note that when Gettysburg was happening-- Gettysburg is an important battle and I do believe that in a sense, it saved the nation-- but on July 4 of the same year, 1863, Vicksburg, Mississippi on the Mississippi River surrendered to grant after the long siege. That victory was actually as important, if not more important. Taking Vicksburg means that the Mississippi River was closed off to the Confederacy. The Confederacy was split, and now they were surrounded. And of course, they couldn't get supplies, and so on. How did Vicksburg feel about that? They refused to celebrate the 4th of July for 88 years. And Grant, of course, would eventually become the 5 star general leading the cause. After Vicksburg-- and Vicksburg was very bloody-- and before that, Shiloh was very bloody, there was a lot of dissension in the ranks among other generals towards Grant. And they spun a lot of stories that he was an alcoholic, and that he was drunk all the time. 

Lincoln got a little tired of that. The man did drink, but the record does not indicate that he was ever drunk in a battle, nor was he ever in a circumstance of leadership where he was drunk. In any case, after being told this by I believe General Halleck, who was like the Joint Chief of Staff today, he was the commander of the Army in Washington-- Lincoln finally said, look. Grant wins battles. Find out what he's drinking and give it to the other generals. Lincoln knew he needed someone to finish the deed, and that would be Grant. The part that we remember the most about this speech is-- I have to tell you, in the message, there's one mistake that Lincoln made. The mistake was, he says, very eloquently, "few will remember what we say here today, but they can never forget what they did here today." It turned out just the opposite. Lincoln never expected. 

And that's typical. A presenter or a speaker rarely can predict the historical audience's reaction. But in any case, I always find that kind of fascinating. The most important part of this speech, in some ways, and the second thing Lincoln did was to refocus the role of the Union versus the role of the states. And it comes in that section called "A New Birth of Freedom." And that new birth of freedom is that section which he talks about saving government by the people so that a new birth of freedom may occur. Remember that at this time-- this is the 1860s-- there really are no other governments like the American government in which common people are able to select their leader and their congress. Most countries are governed by an emperor or a king or a dictator or a czar throughout the world-- China, Africa. So Lincoln recognizes America is the great experiment. Can regular people govern themselves? 

And a lot in Europe said, look at that civil war and how bloody it is. They can't do it. You can't trust it. Therefore, you need a king to keep those rabble rousing people in line and provide security. And of course, we see this same debate over and over again, don't we? And it's still going on. What's happening in Egypt? They're going back towards a dictator, essentially-- a military government. And that's for security. So Lincoln saw that finishing the war meant keeping this experiment alive and setting up the example of government by the people. 

Here's the other thing he did, which is fascinating. And again, Lincoln evolves in his thinking so quickly. He's so far ahead of many others. But he saw government of the people as different than government of the states. Prior to the Civil War, it was government of the states. The states were more important by the federal government. And the South breaking away was essentially saying, the state should have the right to secede-- not the people were seceding. Their states were seceding. What Lincoln does in the Gettysburg Address is to say, no. It's not government of the states. 

It's government of the people, and the union represents the people. He redefines America. Prior to this time, to the Civil War, it was not uncommon for people to say, the United States are a free country. Sounds awkward, doesn't it? But think about that. The United States are a free country. After the war and after Lincoln, it becomes the United States is a free country. Isn't that interesting? Remember, Lee was offered the command of the Union Army by Lincoln after Fort Sumter was attacked. He was regarded as the best general in the United States Army. 

He took a couple days, turned it down, and said, I cannot fight against Virginia. And he went to become the most famous general of the 19th century. Virginia was more important to him than the Union. That was not atypical. People identified with their state more so than they did with their country. After Gettysburg, after the war, Lincoln helped to redefine what was most important, and it became more an identification with the United States of America and not their state. That was a significant change. So what did Lincoln do? He redefined the American Revolution. He lifted the battle up to a level which was well above the rot that was around them and the disgust at the loss of life, and memorialized the sacrifice. 

And then he redefined the nation as a union instead of a collection of states. That's a pretty powerful series of messages in 272 words. To understand a speech, you have to hear it. Unfortunately, no one had invented the tape recorder when Lincoln spoke, and so we can't play a recording. But if you ever read Dr. King's dream speech, it's one thing to read it. It's another thing to hear it. What do we know about Lincoln as a speaker? Well, I'll tell you this-- he was not like the actors before Daniel Day Lewis who portrayed him-- Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda, they mostly have baritone voices and they're great to hear on the screen. They're closer to my voice. 

But that's not Lincoln. Lincoln had a high tenor voice. So did Theodore Roosevelt. In the 19th century, there were no microphones. And a high tenor voice can be heard sometimes better than a low voice. So what did Lincoln have that was so advantageous? His voice was audible. He could be heard from a long distance. Second thing that made Lincoln a very good speaker-- besides his preparation, he was a great storyteller. His aides would become upset after awhile listening to him tell stories. 

But he knew what he was doing. And he could disarm an audience with a great story. Incidentally, Lincoln also had a Kentucky accent. He spent quite a bit of time in Kentucky, Indiana, and in Southern Illinois. And if you've been down to Southern Illinois, you know they all came from Kentucky. My father came from Kentucky. I have my mother from New Hampshire and my father from Kentucky. This was rough on me. I had schizophrenic speech growing up. In any case, Lincoln's voice was an advantage, but it's not the way we think of the voice today. 

We can't hear Lincoln say it, but we can hear an actor read it. I'm going to play a segment of Ken Burns' "The Civil War" for you now, called "The New Birth of Freedom." You're going to see scenes from the battlefield and scenes from the 50th anniversary of the commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg, 1913. But you'll also hear the actor say it. And we think that Burns got it pretty close. And Daniel Day Lewis did a pretty good job with it as well in the Lincoln movie last year. Listen to the rhythms. And most importantly, we think the actor reading it here, when he comes to the end and says, "Of the people, for the people, by the people," he gets that right because the emphasis, for Lincoln, was not on the first words, but on the word "people." that was the important point. It was the people, not the states. 

So let's take a look at this segment. I find that a very powerful piece. Ken Burns made one of the great documentaries of all time. And I have played that many times. Of course, to see the scene from 1913 and the 50th anniversary, that was something. But as you listen to the speech spoken, the rhythm, the movement of ideas, you begin to appreciate even more how powerful it is and think again about those arguments. How much the audience took for granted Lincoln's new interpretation of the American Revolution. As one author said, it was a slight of hand. He took what had been their understanding of the Constitution and redefined it completely. And instead of doing what the abolitionists wanted to do, which was to throw out the Constitution and start over, he saved it and changed it and made it a more perfect document, more like the Declaration of Independence. 

If you saw the film Lincoln in 2012, you know that that focused on the efforts between his election and his inaugural speech to pass the 13th Amendment. To finally end slavery for all times in America. Lincoln was perfecting the Constitution. In a sense, he saved it. This speech had notable impact. We've talked a little bit about it. The audience present at Gettysburg liked the speech. He got good applause. One author said the audience applauded at least five times. But it wasn't regarded as a great speech by that audience. 

There were about 20,000 people and they're standing out there, and they've been sitting and standing for a long time, listening to others, and that would certainly affect them. He was very quick. The secondary audience at that time were the audiences who read about it in the newspapers. They'd get a chance to read the paper. The southern papers weren't terribly kind, you can imagine. And even The Chicago Times, which was a democratic paper-- political parties tended to own the newspapers. Kind of sounds like today, doesn't it? So it wasn't uncommon for a political party to control a newspaper, and so there would be the supporting papers and the anti papers, and so on. They were very unhappy with Lincoln all the time. The most important audience, though, was the historical audience, because the secondary audience really didn't come to grasp the speech until after Lincoln's death. 

And then people began to re-look at it and began to appreciate it. Other than Edward Everett, who saw it right away, it took some time. But after Lincoln's death, the United States began to grasp the significance of what Lincoln had said and how he had refocused the nation in a way that was different from before the Civil War. It was very hard, I think, for Lincoln to say to all these people who had sacrificed in so many ways in such a gigantic, bloody war that we're going to return to the way things were. How were things? The best way to describe the pre Civil War approach to government was called the politics of deference. Politics of deference was especially popular during the Revolutionary founding fathers' era up until the 1820s, and that was to defer to two groups of people-- the wealthy and the landowners. Of course, a lot of people were left out, weren't they? By race, by gender-- right, ladies? Took awhile, didn't it? 

Other folks were not allowed in either. Lincoln knew that was wrong. He saw that this experiment to succeed had to be broader. That's why that section of the people-- and notice how the actor says "people," "people," "people." That's everybody. And that would then cause the Declaration of Independence to become more important, that all men are created equal, and then Lincoln's Gettysburg Address would become so critical to all the causes-- the causes for women suffrage, the cause for civil rights after the end of the war, the cause for gay rights today. Almost every effort by a group of people who are in this country gets tied back to the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence. And the fact that they tied back to the Declaration of Independence is thanks to Lincoln. So the America we know of today that continues to thrive, and the way in which it operates, was conceived of by Lincoln. And that's why I regarded and many regard it as the greatest speech in American history because its impact is still felt today, and its impact was for all time. 

So that's the Gettysburg Address. And I'll be glad to take some questions.