KARLYN BOWMAN: Good afternoon.
My name is Karlyn Bowman and I would like
to welcome all of you and our C-SPAN audience
to this special AEI seminar on Abraham Lincoln
designed to coincide with the release of Stephen
Spielbergís new movie Lincoln.
I have always felt one of the great privilege
and pleasures of being at AEI was to take
part in these occasional tutorials given by
AEI scholars.
Weíre very fortunate today to have two of
AEIs most revered scholars to discuss our
16th president.
Walter Berns is the University Professor Emeritus
at Georgetown and an emeritus scholar at AEI
where for many years he focused on deepening
our understanding of our constitution.
His Bradley Lecture Lincoln at 200: Why we
still read our 16th president was perhaps
the most popular lecture in the scores of
Bradley Lectures that weíve held here over
the last quarter century.
Dr. Leon Kass is the Madden-Jewett scholar
at AEI, a longtime teacher at the University
of Chicago and chairman of the Presidentís
Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005.
This year Dr. Kass received AEIís highest
award the Irving Crystal Lecture and he delivered
a marvelous lecture at our annual dinner:
The Other War on Poverty Finding Meaning in
America, which is available on AEIís website
www.aei.org.
His most recent book is what so proudly we
hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech and
Song written with Amy Kass and Diana Schaub.
There is now a website associated with the
book www.whatsoprodulywehail.org.
The authors provide rich resources for teachers
and students eager to learn more about what
it means to be an American.
If I could ask before we begin for all of
you to turn off your cellphones, just as they
do in the movies, weíll begin our seminar
on Lincoln.
WALTER BERNS: Thank you, Karlyn.
I should say at the beginning this is not
the first time that Professor Kass and I have
talked about Lincoln at AEI.
Itís obviously the first time that weíve
talked about the film since the film is new.
I want to say a word about the film.
The film is titled Lincoln.
Not Lincoln at Fort Sumter, not Lincoln and
the Dred Scott decision, not Lincoln and the
territorial question, not Lincoln the small-town
lawyer, but simply Lincoln.
There is something significant I think in
that fact.
I think Spielberg intended to present the
central Lincoln, perhaps in a film show the
greatness of Lincoln.
I saw the film with some trepidations.
It turned out to be a better film than I thought
it would be.
I thought Daniel Day Lewis was excellent as
Lincoln.
I donít know how the film did it, I donít
think heís 6 foot 5 inches tall but somehow
the film managed to show that he towers over
everybody else in it.
I also think that the man who played his chief
antagonist in the film, what was his nameÖ?
LEON KASS: Tommy Lee Jones.
WALTER BERNS: Tommy Lee Jones playingÖ
LEON KASS: Thaddeus StevensÖ
WALTER BERNS: Al Goreís roommate at Harvard
as a matter of fact.
He was very good too.
And the film presentedÖthe drama in the film
was provided by of course by the passage of
the bill in the House of Representatives providing
for the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery
in the United States.
As I say the film is better than I thought
it would be.
My only particular quarrel with it is the
failure of the film to discuss clearly the
significance of the various Confederate efforts
to come to a peace conference or the various
references to the Confederate deputies who
wanted to talk about peace.
The film somehow doesnít indicate the significance
of those events but so much for that.
The question is: Did the film present the
greatness of Lincoln?
I think it did not do that.
I would not quarrel with Spielberg for failing
to do that because my point is no film or
play could show the greatness of Lincoln.
To make that point I want to change the subject
for a moment.
When I was a young teenager in and around
Chicago tennis courts, I spent my youth on
tennis courts in and around Chicago; we used
to argue frequently as a matter of fact as
to who was the most beautiful woman in America.
The women we would place on this particular
pantheon were all movie actresses.
I cannot remember the name of a single movie
actress from the 1930s but take my word for
it.
They were well the counterparts of the early
next generations, Marilyn Monroe or Sophia
Lauren.
I donít remember how we argued that point.
I do remember we never settled the argument.
A few years and a world war later, I returned
to Chicago this time to the University of
Chicago as a graduate student.
At Chicago we read books, great books.
One great book I read there was a book called
the Laocoon, written by a German eighteenth
centuryÖGerman playright and Pascal scholar
a guy called Lessing.
The book is aboutÖwell in the first place
Laocoon was a Trojan priest who warned the
Trojans about the so called Trojan Horse.
And for this he was punished the Greek god
whose name I forget here and he and his two
sons were strangled by monstrous sea serpents.
The cover of the book shows that going on.
Someone, and the name of the sculptor I donít
remember, but someone made a sculpture of
the event.
This has to do with the Trojan War and more
particularly with Helen.
That is to say what I want to say has about
it has to do with Helen.
A woman of surpassing beauty, the wife of
Menelaus, the Spartan king who was seduced
by Paris and taken to Troy.
The consequence of that seduction and kidnapping
of course was the Trojan War.
Sometime in theÖthis book, this essay Laocoon
really has to do really withÖwell itís an
essay on role of the arts.
On the one hand the plastic arts, sculpture
and painting and on the other hand poetry.
What they can do and their limitations.
Specifically how does this poet, perhaps the
greatest poet of all time Homer describe Helen,
the most beautiful woman in the world?
The fact of the matter is he doesnít do it.
He portrays the scene in the so-called House
of Nobles which was the kind of Trojan House
of Lords in which these old codgers, something
like me are sitting around and Helen the most
beautiful woman in the world comes into the
room.
He makes no effort to describe her beauty,
he makes a passing reference to her white
arms and beautiful hands but he could be describing
Bella Abzug or somebody because lots of women
have white arms and beautiful hands.
How does he describe Helen?
He doesnít.
He describes her effect.
She comes into this room of old men and one
of them says to the others, ìShe was worth
the war.î I conclude from that that it is
not possible or put it this way the beauty
of a human being, the beauty of a woman, does
not lend itself to verbal description.
My point of course is not that.
My point is really that the greatness of Lincoln
does not lend itself to dramatic depictions.
Meaning nobody, not Stephen Spielberg or any
other playwright or filmmaker can use his
art and succeed in demonstrating Lincolnís
greatness.
The fact of the matter is LincolnÖhis greatness
consisted in his words and the use to which
he put those words, the political use to which
he put those words.
Iíve said and I will repeat today: Lincoln
is Americaís poet.
Heís Americaís poet as Homer was the Greeksí
poet as Shakespeare was the English poet.
There can be no argument about anything in
Shakespeareís case.
One thinks of wellÖShakespeare wrote of English
kings and English rulers and the great John
of Gauntís speeches and I think in Richardís
second when John of Gaunt speaks of ìThis
blessedîÖI canít remember the whole speech
but it goes something like this, ìThis throne
of kings, this emerald isleÖthis something
or otherÖthis England.î Or Henry the Fifth
where Henry the Fifth otherwise known whatís
his name the actor, speaks of well, ìWhat
have kings that pirates do no not have save
ceremonyÖgeneral ceremony?
Just as Homer and Shakespeare were poets so
I argue is Abraham Lincoln Americaís poet.
His speech, his great political speeches are
really poems in a sense.
The films, one film Saving Private Ryan went
so far as to quote a famous Lincoln letter
to Mrs. Bixby, a letter of condolence.
Itís not the greatest of those letters.
The greatest of such letters is a letter that
Lincoln wrote to Fanny McCullough.
Fanny McCullough was a teenage girl, the daughter
of a friend of Lincolnís from Illinois who
was killed in battle and Lincoln wrote this
letter of condolence to her.
At a particular time it is interesting, this
was after the battle of Antietam, shortly
after the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest
day in American history, after which Lincoln
had to fire the commanding General McClellan
and appoint a new one named Burnside who was
shortly to commit the catastrophe at Fredericksburg.
At the same time Lincoln was trying his best
to get support for his Emancipation Proclamation
which was to be formally issued on the first
of January.
During all this time, during all his problems
he sat down and wrote this letter in his own
handwriting.
I am no longer able to read but Professor
Kass has agreed to read the letter and itís
something to listen to.
LEON KASS: Dear Fanny,
It is with deep grief that I learn of the
death of your kind and brave father and especially
that it is affecting your young heart beyond
what is common in such cases.
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to
all and to the young it comes with bitterness
agony because it takes them unawares.
The older have learned to ever expect it.
I am anxious to afford some alleviation of
your present distress.
Perfect relief is not possible except with
time.
You cannot not now realize that you will ever
feel better.
Is this not so?
And yet it is a mistake.
You are sure to be happy again.
To know this which is certainly true will
make you some less miserable now.
I have had experience enough to know what
I say and you need only to believe it to feel
better at once.
The memory of your dear father instead of
an agony will yet be a sad, sweet feeling
in your heart of a pure and holier sort than
you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to you afflicted
mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln
WALTER BERNS: In this midst of all his troubles
and God knows Lincoln had troubles he could
sit down and write a letter like that to a
teenage girl.
Well as I say he was Americaís poet.
To illustrate that point I want to quote the
last paragraph of the First Inaugural.
The point was that the Union was breaking
up.
He spent the preceding paragraphs trying to
argue with the South not to secede or to argue
that they had no right to secede and he ends
by saying this: ìI am loath to close we are
not enemies but friends.
We must not be enemies.
Passion may have strained but it must not
break our bonds of affection.
The mystic cords of memories stretching from
every battlefield and patriot grave to every
living heart and hearthstone all over this
broad land will yet swell the chorus of the
union when again touched, as surely they will
be, by the better angels of our nation.
We know certain things about Lincoln.
He had no speechwriter.
He wrote every word he uttered every word
he published.
He wrote and he wrote this.
And itís not by chance that his most celebrated
speech, the Gettysburg Address, was delivered
on a battlefield on the occasion of dedicating
a cemetery filled with the graves of patriots.
Professor Kass will now provide an explication
of that particular text.
LEON KASS: Thank you, Walter.
Iíll only say just one word about the film
to echo I think what Walter Berns just said.
I mean we see in some ways a compelling portrait
of Lincoln.
We see his mastery of political maneuvering,
we see his resolution, something of his prudence,
his humanity and his suffering, his common
touch and his way with words.
And we see something with his determination
to pass the 13th Amendment and his devotion
to a complete victory in the Civil War, insisting
on complete surrender rather than a negotiated
peace.
What we donít get anything of a picture of
Lincolnís principles or his profound understanding
of the American Republic and its need for
a refounding.
For that you really need to listen to Lincolnís
words, to his speeches.
These are things he presented at great length
but some in lapidary form and none better
than the Gettysburg Address.
For those of you who have seen the movie the
Gettysburg Address shows up at the beginning
with little touches where young people are
quoting back to him phrases from the speech
and heís grateful for this.
But the movie doesnít treat the speech as
a speech nor does it try to get at its meaning.
And my task today is to try to say something
about what is going on in this speech and
why it really is in lapidary form a really
perfect expression of Lincolnís understanding
of America and of his task.
The speech you know has been memorized, recited
and admired.
All kinds of scholars have discussed its rhetorical
devices, its literary merit, its political
reception.
But very few have attended to the thought
of Lincolnís speech and the deeper proposes
it serves.
Everybody sees that this funeral oration honoring
the Union dead in the battle that marked the
turning point in the War against Southern
rebellion was even more clearly a summons
to the living to prosecute to a victorious
conclusion a war that despite the victory
at Gettysburg was still not going well enough.
The great task remaining before us is first
and foremost the winning of the War.
But very few people see the speech, that the
speech offers Lincolnís reinterpretation
of the American founding, his understanding
of why the war is a test of that founding
and his own redefinition of this nation now
being reborn as a result of passing that bloody
test.
Central to Lincolnís declaration of America
reborn is his own new, as it were, baptismal
teaching on the relation between liberty and
equality, crucial to our new birth of freedom.
And what Iíd like to do in this talk is offer
evidence for these very large claims.
Now the expressed rhetorical purpose of the
speech is evident on the surface.
The occasion is as Walter has said the dedication
of a Union cemetery at Gettysburg for the
burial of the nearly 5,300 Union fallen, killed
in two days.
Another 17,000 union soldiers are wounded,
27,000 Confederate soldiers killed or wounded,
two days.
Lincoln acknowledges that it is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
By the way you have the texts at your seat
if youíd like to look on.
But Lincoln is much less interested in dedicating
a patch of earth to honor the dead than he
is in inspiring his listeners, us the living
who are despite dispiriting loss and grief,
ìto be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who have fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced.
To the great task remaining before us namely
victory in the war and the restoration of
the Union now on a more solid foundation.î
But it is the outer frame of the speech especially
its beginning and its end that bespeaks Lincolnís
larger purpose.
To create for future generations an interpretation
of the War and especially the Warís relation
to both the once new nation brought forth
by our fathers and conceived in liberty and
this nation which through the sacrifice of
war and our dedication shall have a new birth
of freedom.
Before turning to those passages at the beginning
and the end, I need to say something about
the relation of this speech to a concern that
had preoccupied Lincoln for at least 25 years.
In January 1838 in a remarkable speech to
the Young Menís Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois
Lincoln, aged 28, worried about the perpetuation
of our instructions now that the founding
generation had gone to rest and those who
had known them were also dying out.
Itís an astonishing speech informed by profound
reflections on themes such as law or lawlessness,
soaring political ambition including his own,
and the vulnerability of free institutions
in democratic times of both mob rule and tyranny.
It is in this speech that Lincoln asserts
that perpetuating our political institutions
requires what he called the development of
a political religion, comprising reverence
for the laws and more generally sober sentiments
ìhumed from the solid quarry of reason, among
them our founding principles.î As Lincoln
put, ìpassion has helped us, but can do so
no more.
It will in the future be our enemy.
Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason
must furnish all of the materials for our
future support and defense.
Let those materials be molded into general
intelligence and sound morality and in particular
a reverence for the Constitution and laws.î
Now itís my intention that Lincoln was throughout
his life obsessed with the problem of attaching
his fellow citizens to the American Republic.
And that he self-consciously crafted his best
political utterances with a view to their
becoming the canonical texts of the much needed
American political religion.
Now the Gettysburg Address is obviously in
both form and substance a perfect text for
the bible of American political religion itís
short enough to be memorized.
Three paragraphs of progressively increasing
length, a mere ten sentences, 272 words, only
130 different words, 74 percent of which are
monosyllables.
The polysyllabic words stand out against the
little words, and only a few pregnant longer
words appear more than once: among the disyllabic
words, only conceived, living, rather, people
(three times in the last clause), and especially
nation (5 times: ìnew nationî in paragraph
1; ìthat nation,î ìany nation,î and ìthat
nationî in paragraph 2; but ìthis nationî
in the last sentence of paragraph 3, this
nation that shall be reborn into freedom).
Among still longer words, Lincoln uses more
than once only devotion (twice), consecrate
or consecrated (twice), andóthe most important
word in the speechódedicate or dedicated
(6 times).
Noteworthy also is the echoing use of the
word ìhereîóheard 8 timesóthe importance
of which will be clear by the end.
The three paragraphs of progressively increasing
length refer to time periods and actors of
progressively increasing rhetorical importance:
(paragraph 1) the past (ìFour-score and seven
years agoî; ìour fathersî; 30 words); (paragraph
2) the very immediate present (ìNowî; we
who are engaged in a great civil war, but
mainly a much smaller we who are, right here
and right now, met on a great battlefield
of that war and who, fittingly and properly,
have come to dedicate a portion of that field;
73 words); and (paragraph 3) our future in
relation to our present and our past (contrasting
ìthe brave menî who fought and died, with
ìus the livingî; and moving from (a) our
inability through speech to dedicate ground
better consecrated by the deeds of the brave
men, to (b) ìus the livingî dedicating ourselves
to the great task remaining before us, (c)
to ìwe here highly resolv[ing]î to win the
war, so that (d) certain great things will
follow, both for this nation (ìa new birthî)
and also for people everywhere (169 words,
nearly half of them in the last sentence about
our dedication).
The speech, in its spatial references, has
an hour-glass structure, widest below: it
opens ìon this continent,î narrows in its
center to ìa great battle-fieldî and, even
narrower, to ìa portion of that field,î
but finishes by suggesting that our dedication
ìhereî can ensure that popular government
will never perish from the whole earth.óThe
last word of the speech.
But these are smaller formal details important
for rhetorical effect.
But hardly by themselves enough to give the
speech its canonical standing for that we
get to look at its content and especially
the beginning and the end.
Letís examine them..
ìFour score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.î
Four scores and seven years ago, why does
Lincoln begin with this expression?
Scholars note that the language is biblical
and it echoes the 90th Psalm: ìThe days of
our years are threescore and ten or even by
reason of strength four score years.î But
few notice that by this biblical reference
Lincoln is making a crucial substantive point.
The deed he is about to recount, he intimates,
happened not in living memory.
Four score and seven years ago no one alive
today in 1863 had yet been born.
Lincolnís beginning reflects and highlights
his long-standing concern about perpetuation
in a fully post-revolutionary age.
The theme and imagery of the first paragraph
and indeed of the frame of the speech as a
whole is birth, the birth and at the end the
rebirth of the nation.
Four score and seven years ago or 87 years
identifies that birth year as 1776 the year
of the Declaration of Independence not 1787
the year of the Constitution.
Lincoln gives no hint of the bloody war of
American separation and secession that secured
indeed the Declarationís verbal assertion
of our independence from Great Britain.
Instead, Lincoln gives us an image of quiet,
generative concourse and natural birth.
According to Lincoln, our fathers, and by
the way after pointing out that we couldnít
have known them they really are rightfully
our grandfathers, using biblical language
referring to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he
calls them our fathers bringing us closer
to them in sprit and inviting pious reverence
for our patrimony.
But in any case our fathers brought forth
or sired upon this continent as mother a new
nation.
Itís not new only itís new not only in historical
fact, it is new also in principle.
Lincoln tells us here precisely how it was
distinctively novel.
It was conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created
equal.
Several points deserve emphasis and especially
when we Lincolnís description of the founding
birth with the birth-certificate language
of the Declaration of Independence itself.
As you all known in the Declaration the signers
declare: ìWe hold these truths to be self
evident that all men are created equal.î
In Lincolnís version three important changes
are made.
First, Lincoln changes a self-evident truth
to a proposition.
Both ideas come from geometry and Lincoln
had studied Euclid.
And by the way that bit in the movie about
Euclid being the basis for Lincolnís belief
in equality was just hokum.
But nevermind.
A self-evident truth is in geometry an axiom,
which neither admits a proof nor requires
it for it contains its evidence in itself.
The whole is greater than the part.
If you know what a whole is then you know
what a part is, the statement the whole is
greater than the part is simply obvious.
According to the Declaration of Independence,
human equality is held to be an axiom, evident
in itself.
If one understands the meaning of men, one
must immediately see that all men are equally
human.
A proposition, on the other hand, is like
a geometrical theorem.
Its truth must be proved, yet it may turn
out to be unprovable or even false.
According to Lincoln, human equality was less
a self-evident premise of the American founding,
more a proposition in need of future demonstration.
Thatís a very big change.
The significance of this shift from axiom
to proposition is revealed by Lincolnís second
big change.
According to Lincoln, our fathers treated
all men are created equal not as the Declaration
states, as a truth that we hold, but as something
to which they were dedicated.
Lincoln shifts the picture from theory to
practice.
The proposition is more than an intellectual
matter one holds as a belief and proves in
speech.
It is a practical goal to which one must devote
oneself in action.
The truth of the proposition of human equality
cannot be shown by Euclidian reasoning, it
must demonstrated through deed and devotion.
Third and most subtly, Lincoln does not ask
us to think of the proposition only as a universal
truth that we too can try to prove in practice;
he wraps that truth in the pious drapery of
the dedication of our fathers.
We should take an interest in this proposition,
he implies, not only because it might be true,
but as a matter of honoring the memory of
our remarkable fathers.
In short, Lincoln has transformed a merely
intellectual truth held as self-evident and
accessible to universal human reason, that
was the Declarationís formulation, into a
truth requiring practical demonstration by
a particular people, beginning with our revered
fathers, who dedicate themselves to doing
exactly this.
In this way, Lincoln summons our ancestral
piety and attaches it to an emerging political
religion whose creed Lincoln is here redefining.
Yet as we shall see, ancestral piety cannot
alone sustain us and a new birth is necessary,
in large part, because our fathers did not
get it exactly right.
Why does Lincoln change the Declaration?
In order to address and correct a deep difficulty
in our founding regarding the relation between
equality and liberty.
A clue is provided in the other big idea in
the first sentence, conceived in liberty.
We know the fathers, we know the mother continent,
and we know the child nation and to what it
is dedicated.
But what is meant by ìconceived in liberty?î
And how does this idea figure in Lincolnís
revision of the story of Americaís birth?
I have to confess that the oddity of the word
ìinî in this phrase ìconceived in libertyî
confused me for many years.
One astute reader has suggested that just
as a natural child is ìconceived in love,î
so the American national child was ìconceived
in love of liberty.î I myself toyed with
ìconceived freelyî or ìconceived by choice,î
rather than by necessity or nature or in passion,
or alternatively, ìconceived in an act of
independence and liberation, from the rule
of Britain.î But an illuminating interpretation
was given to me by a friend Harvey Flaumenhaft,
of St. Johnís College, Annapolis.
ìIn liberty,î he suggested to me, refers,
he suggests, to the political matrix that
characterizes both the before and the after
of the bringing forth of the new nation.
And that matrix is in fact British liberty.
The context, which was also the context of
the American colonies.
Britain, like the new republic, was a liberal
polity.
But in Britain, unlike the new republic, liberty
was mixed with a hereditary principle: not
only the monarchy, but especially a hereditary
nobility of dukes and barons who lorded it
over the commons.
The truly American innovation is the replacement
of the hereditary principle with the principle
of equality and equal rights.
Government, the founders declared, exists
to secure the rights not only of the highborn
of hereditary principles, but of all men,
who are equally endowed with unalienable rights.
We today take for granted the compatibility
of political liberty and political equality,
but this novel addition of the principle of
equality and the principle of liberty was
then an unprecedented experiment.
Not unreasonably it gave rise to two big questions:
Can a nation conceived and so dedicated long
endure?
And can political equality be attained without
the surrender of liberty?
Those were live questions, one of them Lincoln
raises himself in the beginning of the speech.
Letís take the second question first.
Lincoln had been personally attacked as a
tyrant who was destroying liberty because
he pursued equality too zealously.
ìMaryland, my Marylandî, the state song
written in 1861, begins ìThe despotís heel
is on thy shore, his torch is at thy temple
door, Maryland.î And the alleged despot:
None other than Abraham Lincoln.
His later suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus would eventually be ruled unconstitutional.
Yet Lincoln teaches in this speech that commitment
to equality is not only compatible with liberty,
but is in fact freedomís only true foundation.
Regarding the first point, Lincoln says the
war is a test, a test of the durability of
a nation committed to equality as well as
to liberty.
And although he does not say so here as he
does in the second Inaugural, the war is a
test that is now upon the nation because of
an offensive defect in the founding.
The defect is not mentioned by name in the
Gettysburg address, but its name is slavery.
And by the way, Lincoln does not mention either
the north or the south or even the Union in
this speech, nor does he assign blame for
the war.
In the second Inaugural he explicitly suggests
that the offense of slavery lies with the
nation as a whole.
The Declaration of Independence was a liberal
document, not a republican one.
It did not by itself specify any particular
form of government.
Any government is legitimate so long as it
secures the rights of all who live under its
rule.
Despite adding the egalitarian principle to
the British liberal principle and despite
the fact that in Lincolnís reformulation
of the nationís birth equality is the goal,
was to come out of liberty by way of dedication,
the new nation was flawed and stained from
the start by the institution of slavery.
Contrary to current opinion, many of the founders
understood that Americaís practice fell short
of its founding principles and they devised
instrumentalities that they hoped would place
slavery in the course of its ultimate extinction.
But by Lincolnís time the situation had deteriorated.
Not only was the regime in contradiction with
itself, falling short of its stated ideals,
worse, the south in rebelling had given effect
to the view that the principle of equality
was not merely too lofty, but in fact as a
proposition simply false.
Lincoln knew that this denial of human equality
was the true cause of the war.
And Lincoln understood that the bloody struggle
over slavery was the true test of the nation.
That, by the way, is the reason he insists
upon the surrender.
Now that the self-evident truth of equality
had been turned into a proposition need truth
and now that the rebels had repudiated the
proposition, calling it a self-evident lie,
passing the test meant winning the war because
winning the war meant a repudiation of that
repudiation, an indispensable vindication
of the proposition of human equality, which
is central to Lincolnís understanding of
the American founding.
So what really was the issue in this war and
why must we hear highly resolve that these
dead shall not die in vain?
The goal for which victory is indispensable
is two-fold, both transcending the mere restoration
of the now dissolved Union, and this is at
the end of the speech: First, that this nation
under God shall have a new birth of freedom
and second, that government of the people,
by the people, for the people shall not perish
from the earth.
The new birth of freedom for which Lincoln
is offering here the baptismal blessing and
explanation is a birth through blood, not
through generative concourse of ancestral
patriarchs and mother continent.
More important, this new freedom will differ
from British liberty, in which the nation
was first conceived.
Here, equality will not come out of liberty.
Rather, freedom will be born out of equality
because the in-egalitarian principle and the
practice of slavery will be repudiated and
defeated as the necessary condition of the
rebirth of freedom.
Masters as well as slaves will share in this
new birth of freedom, having shed the mutual
degradation that enslavement brings to them
both.
Liberty, says Lincoln, not only has not been
destroyed as the rebels claimed, it will for
the first time be put on a truly secure foundation.
The radical equality of all human beings,
now thrice called the people, who will govern
and be governed for their own well-being.
We the people, we the living re-dedicating
ourselves here on the graves of the fallen
become under God the nationís new patriarchs
and founders.
Itís a democratic re-founding here and now.
Just to close, the nation conceived in liberty
got a new birth of freedom thanks to the self-sacrificing
deeds of our brave men who struggled here
and elsewhere.
And thanks to the dedication of the living
under Lincolnís leadership to the cause to
which they gave their last full measure of
devotion.
But taking the long view, the nation better
became able to attach the hearts and minds
of its citizens thanks to the words fitly
spoken at Gettysburg by father Abraham, who
presided over its re-founding in speech no
less than in deed, and whose words have inspired
all who came afterwards to dedicate themselves
to preserve, protect, and perfect our political
freedom and equality.
Today and tomorrow our attachment to the republic
is greatly enhanced whenever we reanimate
Lincolnís words and under their still living
instruction remain dedicated to his vision
of our natural meaning and purpose.
WALTER BERNS:: I think one can gather from
what Professor Kass has said about the Gettysburg
address that when weíre dealing with Lincoln,
weíre dealing with an extraordinary man.
I donít hesitate to say that Lincoln was
a genius.
I remember this connection, something said
by the German, great German poet Goethe, that
when youíre dealing with genius all you can
do is admire it.
We people should call on all about Goethe,
we named a street after him.
Itís called Goethe street.
I would like to conclude our presentation
today and incidentally we have provoked some
discussion, conclude by referring to the last
paragraph of the second Inaugural.
In the piece I wrote on Lincoln, I gather
you have copies of it, after my conclusion
of the Declaration I go to the last paragraph
of the second Inaugural and refer to the awesome
beauty of it:.
ìWith malice towards none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives
us the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nationís wounds,
to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan; to do all
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
peace among ourselves and with all nations.î
Six weeks later he was murdered.
We sometimes say that a man can be known by
the company he keeps.
And I would say and repeat here that a nation
can be known by the men it admires most of
all, by its heroes.
And I think this country, the United States
of America, pays itself the greatest compliment
when it says Abraham Lincoln is that man for
us.
I donít think, in fact I know, that Steven
Spielberg did not manage somehow to convey
the greatness of Lincoln in that film.
I do think, however, that had some knowledge
that the man he was dealing with was a great
man.
And for that I think we should praise him
for the film.
So, discussion.
QUESTION: You compared Lincoln earlier to
Shakespeare and to Homer and you referred
just recently to his genius.
Could you explain why he pursued a life of
politics and not something more contemplative?
WALTER BERNS: Why he did what?
LEON KASS: Why he pursued a life of politics
and not something more contemplative?
WALTER BERNS: Well, I suppose the first answer
to that is that was the only role open to
him.
And in second place I would say that politics
provides the best opportunity for someone
like him to portray his talents in some particular
way.
Itís not by chance, I think, that the great
drama deals with great people.
I may insult some of you by giving an American
example of the opposite.
I donít whether the play is still known,
but a few years ago there was a play done
by an American playwright, Arthur Miller,
called the Death of a Salesman.
I never saw the play, but Iíve had it described
to me and my reaction to it was who in the
devil cares when that salesman dies?
But one cares when the kings die.
And itís not by chance that the great poets
deal with the death of kings because great
events take place and these kings and Lincoln
in his position as President of the United
States at that particular time was faced with
the question of doing great things.
So we write and talk about Lincoln because
he was involved in great things.
We write and talk about Henry V because he
too was involved in great things.
Why pursue a career in politics?
Because it provides the opportunity to do
really great things, more than a professor.
QUESTION: Thereís been a lot written since
the movie about its modern implications and
what people should take away from it and I
think Congress had a showing of it and the
President had a showing of it.
And I was wondering what do you think people
should take away from seeing the movie besides
Lincolnís greatness?
Are there modern applications?
I donít mean the Republicans should do this,
the Democrats should do that, but what, when
we leave the theater, what should we be feeling
in addition to Lincolnís greatness?
LEON KASS: Well, I think one of the salutary
features of the film is that it shows, especially
to young people who are filled with all kinds
of idealism, that it takes more than having
good ideas to make those ideas efficacious.
One has to engage in the difficult work of
persuading and cajoling and twisting arms.
And much is made of the fact in the movie
of Lincoln as masterful tactician and strategist
and politician and a man who knows how to
twist arms to get things done.
Thatís an important lesson for people who
have no idea how difficult it is to accomplish
anything.
I thought the movie was short, however, on
showing the connection between all of that
operation and the deeply held understanding
and high principle that guided Lincolnís
life.
We donít really know why it was that Lincoln
was so insistent upon the complete surrender
of the South rather than some kind of peaceful
settlement and why the 13th amendment was
so dear to him.
I mean the abolitionists were the people who
were said to be the people animated by a hatred
of slavery and Lincoln was merely, according
to lots of things that youíll hear, merely
interested in union.
But if you understand Lincolnís understanding
of union and its flawed founding, then you
see that he understands both the war, sees
the war as a necessary re-founding, and that
it is to vindicate the principle of equality
and to put the country on its proper foundation,
that he accepts the war, fights it to the
finish, pushes for the submission, thatís
not sufficiently clear.
Whether there is anybody today in public life
who has a large vision of principle that informs
the maneuvering that we see, we would to see
and hear about it.
If somebody comes away from this moving saying,
okay itís time to play hardball now, I saw
how Lincoln did it, theyíre imitating the
means and not the end.
And I think what Walter and Iíve tried to
do is to lay out a picture of something more
of the man and what he was about and not justÖ
I mean, I think itís in here, if you knew
more about Lincoln, you could see it in the
film, but it wasnít highlighted and for most
people whoíve reviewed it, the talk is about
Lincoln politician, Lincoln opportunist, Lincoln
uses immoral means.
In fact, itís said in the movie that the
purist manÖ he has Stevens say that this
was done by improper means by the purist man
of all, as if that was somehow strange.
Walter do you want to add?
WALTER BERNS: Yeah.
This goes back to your first question about
what other professionÖ Lincoln was a lawyer.
In fact, he went back into politics at a particular
point, and that particular point had to do
with slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854.
That got him back in politics and that was
the only thing he could do, really.
The other thing that Professor Kass just mentioned
and that I mentioned in my prepared remarks...
to an extent that they were prepared... about
the failure of the film to do a particular
thing, and that had to do with the peace thing.
Itís not clear in the film what Lincolnís
position with respect to peace was.
In 1864, beginning in early May, May 3 I recallÖ
that happens to be my birthdayÖ Grantís
army fought what we call the Battle of the
Wilderness.
A couple of weeks later they fought as Spotsylvania.
A couple of weeks after that in early June,
at Coal Harbor.
His casualties at that particular time in
spring 1864 were over 60,000 union troops.
Think of that appalling number.
The clamor for peace was tremendous.
The newspapers of course, led by Horace Greeley
of the New York Tribune, were insistent that
Lincoln enter into negotiations with the Confederates
for peace at any price.
The Democratic party at its convention nominated
General McClellan as its presidential candidate
and in its platform it insisted that the South
be allowed to remain slavery states.
The film does not make this clear.
It speaks of the peace negotiations at City
Point in January í65 when the Confederate
delegation was led by the vice presidency
of the Confederate, AlexanderÖ this is interesting,
Stevens from Georgia, he was named by his
parents Alexander Hamilton StevensÖcomes
for peace and the Confederates wanted to arrange
the peace to be between the Confederate States
of America and the United States of America,
just as we have peace between Japan and the
United States after World War II.
The Confederate States would remain the Confederate
States.
Lincoln absolutely refused to negotiate with
anything calling itself the Confederate States
because the Union was the Union.
To acknowledge the Confederacy was to acknowledge
the existence of what Lincoln refused to acknowledge.
That was clear.
And he also insisted against the wishes of
people like Horace Greeley the editor that
the so-called Confederate States had to abolish
slavery and to acknowledge that, so that at
City Point at these negotiationsÖ Lincoln
finally agreed to go there, and he went there
and he talked with Stevens.
They had been Whig congressmen together back
in the 1840s.
They knew each other and liked each other.
And Stevens said at one point, ìAs I understand
it, you regard us as traitors, who are liable
to be hanged for treason.î And Lincoln said
that was so.
And then Stevens paid a great compliment to
Lincoln and said, ìI suppose that would be
your position, but frankly, so long as you
are our president, we donít any of us think
weíre going to be hanged.î
QUESTION: Thank you for that, and I guess
I should thank Steven Spielberg for the movie,
Iím told.
I have kind of a negative reaction to it,
which I want to describe.
Iím told by friends that I should be glad
that someone finally made a movie about Lincoln
that portrays him as a real hero, but frankly
part of my reaction was why did Spielberg
pick this one month when the war was essentially
won and not, for example, portray all of the
challenges that Lincoln faced in being elected
as someone who opposed the expansion of slavery,
or even more important why didnít he show
Lincoln as a war president, and is this just
an accident orÖ it seems to me that it diminishes
Lincoln to say that yes of course he paid
for votes like Obama did for Obamacare, thatís
not what made him a hero, and I believe that
in that summer you just described, when he
was facing imminent defeat in the election
at the hands of McClellan that he nonetheless
rejected a confederate peace delegation I
think that came to Canada and the truth is,
which the movie didnít show, is that if Sherman
hadnít destroyed Atlanta, that McClellan
might have been president and the war might
have ended the wrong way.
WALTER BERNS: Thanks, Paul.
Well thereís no reason for me to repeat any
part of that, because what you say is actually
essential, and in the paper you had I tried
to indicate that, talking about the situation
in the spring of 1864.
Lincoln actually wrote a little note in a
sealed envelope and gave it to the members
of his cabinet in which he predicted that
he would lose that election unless something
miraculous happened.
Well that miraculous thing was Shermanís
march through Georgia and the capture of Atlanta.
And that changed the character of the war.
It was a narrow squeak.
I should say this, sometime after the delivery
of this Bradley lecture, I woke up and my
wife showed me a full page of the Op/Ed page
of the Wall Street Journal, which had reprinted
part of that speech, and it had reprinted
it thanks to Paul Wolfowitz, who called the
editor and insisted they print it.
Thanks, Paul.
I got $400 for that.
QUESTION: Now I agree with both of your assessments
that itís not a great movie, but I wonder
if it can be considered a good movie, a very
good movie.
And the reason why I say that is when I saw
the movie in the theater, two things happened
that were striking.
First, after the House passes the resolution,
there was applause by the audience, and then
at the end of the movie, there was applause.
And I took away from that that people actually
did get the core message, that Lincoln did
all of these practical things to get the measure
passed, but to his limit, he wonít bribe
somebody, whatever means he can, he wonít
go beyond that.
And the second thing is, itís not perfectly
clear about negotiations with the South, versus
why the amendment has to go first, but I think
people pretty quickly understood that he was
trying to end slavery on a matter of equality
and not have a negotiated settlement where
that would be left unsure.
So again, I donít think itís a great movie,
I think that thereís a lot, as Walter suggested,
that you canít possibly accomplish in a movie
about a genius like Lincoln, but I think on
a core question, I think that the audience
came away understanding this essential point
about Lincoln, and I think hence, when they
walk out of the theater, in this day and age,
they got it.
LEON KASS: Thank you very much, Gary, for
that.
I agree with that.
And itís true that we donít see a lot of
Lincoln as a war president and the difficulties
of some of those decisions in the darker days
of the war, but the advantage of focusing
on the struggle to pass the 13th amendment
makes it possible, at least tacitly, to show
that the concern for ending slavery was central
to Lincolnís purpose and that saving the
union and abolishing slavery were two faces
of the same thing.
And I think that was certainly salutary, even
if the places where he discusses how he comes
to equality were really sort of hokey and
there was certain sort of Hallmark sentimentality
in various places where there was an attempt
to discuss principle.
But still, I think the overall thrust of this
is to enable us to see that he, as much as
the abolitionists, hated slavery, and that
he alone amongst them knew how to do it.
And thatís no small part of what one honors
here in addition to his remarkable understanding
and words that heís left us to teach us.
WALTER BERNS: The fact of the matter is that
the abolitionists may have hated slavery,
but they cared nothing for the constitution,
and said that and did not support Lincoln.
Itís an astonishing fact that the abolitionists
did not support him for reelection in 1864.
But the fact of the matter is that there could
have been no abolition of slavery without
the Union.
The Union had to exist.
First came the salvation of the Union because
that was the precondition for the abolition
of slavery.
If the Union didnít exist, consider the radical
case.
All these southern states would go off with
about 90 percent of the blacks in America
as slaves.
And any attempt to abolish slavery in that
foreign country would require a war.
Lincoln understood that.
I repeat, the salvation of the union was the
condition for the abolition of slavery.
No union, no abolition.
LEON KASS: But also, you want to say quickly,
no abolition of slavery, no properly founded
union.
Which is why I think, in some way, the movie
manages to hold these two things together
in Lincolnís own person.
And to that extent I think it is successful;
I think the audience does get it.
And thereís none of the revisionist stuff
about that Lincolnís a depressive, heís
a closet gay, heís got Marfan syndrome all
of this stuff which is now fashionable.
Thereís a really respectful and high-minded
treatment of him, I thought.
WALTER BERNS: Another part of the film I thought
faulty: It didnít end at the proper time.
Thereís one scene where Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln
are in a carriage going off to the theater.
At some point like that, the film should have
ended because everybody knew after that comes
the assassination at Ford Theatre.
You did not have to have another sceneÖ which
I didnít knowÖthey had a scene of some play
going on at the same time at some other theater
in WashingtonÖ
LEON KASS: Where Tad is watching.
WALTER BERNS: Yeah, that was unnecessary.
And dramatically, thatís a failure.
QUESTION: So I thought it was telling that
the film spent a fair amount of time detailing
his personal life as well as his political
life.
And I think to some extent that was sort of
just a ploy to get people to watch and be
interested, to dramatize the wife and the
kids, etc.
But, you come away with the impression that
for him, his politics was the most personal
thing to him because he put it above all else.
You frequently see him just, not talking to
his wife when she needs him or not talking
to his kids when they need him, and that was
very much his most personal priority.
And I guess what I wanted to know is, to what
extent you felt that was an accurate portrayal
and were you happy with sort of the balance,
the way the movie portrayed the two?
LEON KASS: Look, itís always dangerous, in
my view, when you show the life of public
figures and in order to get people interested
you take them into the bedroom and show aspects
of their private life.
On the other hand, I thought there were a
few places where I thought it was either unnecessary
or improper.
QUESTION (continued from same person): I guess
I thought it was interesting that you had
said earlier that you thought it was a very
respectful treatment because that was one
thing I didnít like about the film was that
they showed things that werenít necessary.
WALTER BERNS: The most telling thing they
might have shown is the death of Lincolnís
son Willie (?) during his time in the White
House.
That was a crushing blow.
You think of all the problems that Lincoln
had, to have that, and of course, to have
the problem of his wife, who was a little
batty, you know.
And she spent a lot of money getting rid of
the linoleum in the White House and replacing
it with decent flooring and so on, an extraordinary
amount of money.
So a little bit of that human business and
I think the death of Willie would have been
better than problems with the son who ended
up on Grantís staff and who he allegedly
slapped.
I wonder if thatís actually true.
LEON KASS: One small thing.
I didnít mind it all that much, partly because
itís another aspect of the extraordinary
humanity of this man, that he finds ways of
offering small comfort, of still being fatherly,
of dealing with a difficult wife.
Itís an aspect of the life of a man under
those circumstances.
A little bit goes a long way.
And some of those scenes were very, very touching,
especially the scene about the enlistment
of Robert.
Thatís when Agamemnon goes to make war to
recover Helen for his brother and the gods
require that he sacrifice his own daughter
so that he understands what it is that heís
about to do.
And this was Lincoln, whoíd already lost
one son, having to say yes as president to
the possible sacrifice of the secondÖ seems
to me an aspect of the personal life of the
life of a leader, who hasÖ itís not a question
of showing balance, but itís showing something
of the cost of what it is to be in that place.
And I thought it did some of those things
nicely.
WALTER BERNS: Iím conscious of the fact that
itís too easy to criticize Spielberg for
what he did do and what he didnít do.
One has to recognize that the materials of
Lincolnís life do not lend themselves readily
to a tragedy.
Take the caseÖwell perhaps the best tragedy
in the English language, Hamlet.
Thatís easy for Shakespeare.
Hereís a man whose father is killed by his
uncle, etc. etc. and he wants vengeance.
In a way he wants to be the tragic hero.
Unfortunately he doesnít live back in the
time of Agamemnon and Achilles and Hector
and so forth, he lives in the Christian era,
when you cannot do what Achilles does.
And you cannot, for example, commit suicide,
as Hamlet points out in that first of his
soliloquies, ìTo be or not to be, to die
orÖî He lives in the Christian era and he
is a Christian and he cannot take vengeance
becauseÖ I didnít realize this until recently,
ìVengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.î Does
anybody here know where that verse appears?
Itís in the New Testament; itís in Paulís
epistle to the Romans.
The Romans, who are classical people.
Hamlet canít be that, and Shakespeare writes
a wonderful tragic play about Hamletís dilemmas,
wanting to be a classical like Achilles, but
canít be it because heís a Christian.
And such materials are not available to Spielberg.
And you fasten on to something like the 13th
amendment and hope that this will suffice.
QUESTION: You say that Lincoln is attempting
to harmonize the notion of liberty with the
principle of equality, and certainly, throughout
the war, at many times, he sacrifices liberty
in short doses for the broader notion of equality,
suspending habeas corpus for instance.
But there are also many times in his non-war
policy, with respect to railroads or labor
policy or harbor policy and those sorts of
things, where he seems to be far more egalitarian
and communitarian than someone sort of obsessed
with the notion of liberty might admit.
How do you reconcile that?
LEON KASS: Is this one such speaker?
QUESTION (continued from the same person):
How does one reconcile that and what does
this mean for modern policy making if weíre
still attempting to establish this proposition?
LEON KASS: Itís a very good and welcome question,
both parts of it.
Iím not sufficiently up on the particular
violations, what you would call violations,
of liberty that would suggest that Lincoln
is not libertarian enough.
But on the larger questionsÖ To live in a
country which can secure to each individual
their God-given rights of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness: Those are the liberal
principles of the American founding, of free
institutions.
The question is whether those rights extend
equally to everybody and if you could have
a regime which is truly liberal if only some
people enjoy those rights.
And it seems to me that Lincoln wants to insist
that properÖThere are two things, one I didnít
emphasize sufficiently.
I want to say that in Lincolnís reformulation,
true freedom comes out of the reestablishment
of the primacy of the principle of equality.
Not equality of result, but equality of the
equal dignity and equal standing before the
law.
And the other place where equality comes out
is in the last sentence: Government of the
people, by the people, for the people.
That is an assertion, really, of the supremacy
of the democratic and not merely the liberal
principle.
Not only that the people shall be governed
and not only that it should be for their benefit,
but it is government by the people and that
we here are the agents of the re-founding.
You could say the founders were giants.
Lincoln dissembles the degree to which heís
a giant and says we together here will refoundÖ
Iím glossing this itís not exactly what
he saysÖ but that the new founders are in
fact the people who dedicate themselves to
this re-founding through the deeds of blood.
This is a baptism of the nation, a second
birth.
And it is not done by the giants, great though
they were, but itís really done by the people
whoíve given their lives here in the soil
and we who undertake to make sure they donít
die in vain.
That it seems to me is a correction of the
problem of the beginning; it is whatís really
enabled the country to flourish morally.
For the present age, the question is whether
the push for the equality of result isnít
a certain perversion of the American principles
of equality.
And whether or not those who are not content
with equality before the law or equality of
opportunity, but insist on equality of final
result, equality of income and equality of
all other kinds of things, whether they are
now threatening certain of the liberties and
rights to pursue happiness that it seems to
me are fundamentally American.
I donít think you could enlist Lincoln in
the name of redistribution of income.
You might be able to enlist him on certain
safety nets, people who are badly off through
no fault of their own.
Thatís a stretch.
WALTER BERNS: At the risk of stating or restating
the obvious, we are equals with respect to
our rights, we are not beautiful, equally
intelligent, equally anything else.
Itís equal with respect to our possession
of these rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
That was the understanding at the beginning.
LEON KASS: And Lincoln doesnít change that.
WALTER BERNS: Doesnít change that at all.
And of course thatís the problem.
It offers political problems because those
who are unequally intelligent and greedy and
so forth can cause political problems.
QUESTION: I was wondering if you could speak
a little bit more about the concept of political
religion and how Lincoln may exemplify that.
You had mentioned when you introduced the
concept in this session about some rational
aspects to it, but religion is really not
about an intellectual exercise or understanding
things on that rational level; itís really
a much more visceral, emotional belief experience.
WALTER BERNS: I would begin by going back
to the Declaration of Independence and raising
the question to who is this God whoís called
natureís God?
And in the Declaration of IndependenceÖ And
I do not think that that God is the Christianís
God.
We donít talk too much about that and frequently
our politicians insist that he was indeed
the God that we recognize from the Bible,
but this is a God who gives us certain religious
liberties that I do not think can be found
in the Bible.
Now you go on.
LEON KASS: I think that certainly the God
of the Bible is certainly much more interested
in our duties and seems not at all interested
in our rights.
WALTER BERNS: The word ìrightsî doesnít
appear.
LEON KASS: But, to come more directly to political
religion, and particularly the question of
the relation between reason, sentiment, passion,
and those thingsÖ The remarks in the Lyceum
Address also puzzled me.
On the one hand you call for reverence for
the lawsÖ Oh, Walter, you could probably
quote this from memoryÖ about every lisping
babe learning at his motherís knee to revere
the laws in the ConstitutionÖ Iíve ruined
a very good passage.
And that this is to be taught to lisping babes
seems not to go through the cognitive realm.
Theyíre supposed to feel a reverence and
an attachment.
On the other hand, at the end of the speech
he says passion can no longer sustain us.
The passion that attaches us to the memories
of our dead ancestors, that canít sustain
us.
Rather the materials for the new bond has
to be furnished by the quarry found of cold
calculating, dispassionate reason.
I take it what he means is something like
an attachment not to the deeds of the revolution
but to the principles.
On the other hand, the principles stated alone
do not attach.
The principles have to be clothed in a kind
of poetic language, spoken of in exactly the
way in which he speaks about them here, so
that what you have is a magnificent combination
of passionately rational speech.
Thatís partly what I was hoping to do in
going slowly through the speech.
Thereís thought in this speech, conceived
in liberty.
I mean, what is he doing with the image of
birth and then an image of rebirth?
And if you stop over it, you can sort of parse
its manifest intellectual content.
And yet itís done in such a poetic way and
itís done to stir the feelings and attach
your feelings to this rational interpretation
of these events and the meaning that heís
given it.
Thatís, I think, the coming together of Walterís
sense of Lincoln as great poet.
And the great poets are not simply gushers;
the best of them are deep thinkers about the
things that theyíre doing.
Itís not scientific reason; itís not disinterested
reason, but itís reason to which the sentiments
can be attached.
And he was a master at both making the thought
clear and attaching the feelings to those
thoughts, so that they become permanently
ours, not as abstract treatises, but really
in these poetic renderings, the best two of
whichÖ Well, the end of the first Inaugural
and the two that you see on the two walls
of the Lincoln memorial, unparalleled in American
history.
WALTER BERNS: Something about the memorials
always has struck me: The kind of awe in which
people stand there and look at that seated
Lincoln is something that doesnít take place
at the Jefferson memorial, in my experience.
I want to make a radical statement following
on what Leon has just said, having to do with
the possibility that Lincoln intended himself
to have something to do with this new birth
and so forth.
To state it as radically as possible, we may
owe a debt to John Wilkes Booth, who killed
him.
The consequence of that was expressed by a
colleague of mine in the government department
at Cornell years ago, who spoke of Lincoln
as the martyred Christ of American democracy.
Think of it, if you will.
If he had not been assassinated, would we
think of him as we do?
Thatís a radical proposition.
But I put it to you.
When you think of his position in American
politics prior to the end and how ambiguous
it was in the spring of 1864 and compare that
to the nationís mourning, that train that
goes from Washington through Pennsylvania
to New York, all the way back to Springfield,
stopping at every train stop so the American
people can pay their reverence.
To what extent do we owe a debt to John Wilkes
Booth?
QUESTION: I actually had a follow-up question
to something you mentioned and itís regarding
the speech and the concept of birth at the
beginning and then the rebirth, but between
the birth and rebirth you have to have a death,
do you not, in terms of the cycle?
So what would the death be?
Would it be the experience of the war?
LEON KASS: Well, if you think of baptism,
literally, there isnít a death, literal death.
WALTER BERNS: Youíre not supposed to speak
about baptism.
LEON KASS: Who, me?
WALTER BERNS: Yeah.
LEON KASS: Do I believe in it?
Iíve seen it.
WALTER BERNS: Youíve seen it done, yeah.
LEON KASS: But, no, I think there is a way
in which Lincoln is saying that the flaw in
the original founding, that the Civil War
is in a certain way the death of the Union
as originally founded and it has to be reborn
on a different foundation.
And in fact, this is to touch on another example
of the civil religion and Lincolnís place
in it.
Before he was martyred, he was already, I
think, already seeing a certain analogy between
himself and the biblical foundings.
He refers to Psalm 90 in the opening, ìFour
score and seven years ago, our fathersÖî.
If youíre still in the biblical vein, who
are ìour fathersî?
Well, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are our fathers.
Long ago they did something great, but who
gave that nation a new birth of freedom?
Moses, who in fact got the slaves out of their
enslavement.
And there is a certain sentÖ And in fact,
the people of Israel have a second founding.
Thereís a covenant made with Abraham, which
is not abrogated, itís not forgotten, but
it isnít the political covenant, which is
made at Sinai with these ex-slaves, Moses
being the intermediary.
Here, Lincoln is in way reinterpreting the
whole meaning of the country through its recent
ìnear death experience,î if you will, which
is the Civil War, and redefining the relation
between liberty and equality in this document
so we understand what it has to be going forward.
Itís not that the old child is exactly dead;
itís been saved, rededicated in a different
way.
And that seems to me not unlike what happens
when a child is dedicated at a baptism.
Itís no longer the birth; this is now a rebirth
by choice and speech, but through blood, and
much blood.
WALTER BERNS: Let me add something to that,
and something about the Gettysburg address.
We should remember that the immediate audience
of that address was the American people who
overwhelmingly were a Bible-reading people.
They knew that reference, that instead of
saying 87 he said four score and seven years
ago, they knew that was someplace in the Bible,
and probably most of them knew that it was
in the 90th Psalm.
He goes on to say ìOur fathers brought forthÖî.
And I would swear that a lot of Christians
thought ìOur fathers who art in heaven, hallowed
be thy nameÖî.
And he goes right on to talk about the consecration
of this particular spot of this war.
Consecrate, make sacred.
Again, we were a Christian people at that
time and he was speaking to them knowingly,
I think.
LEON KASS: I think we have time for one more
question if there is one.
QUESTION: Walter, you began with Shakespeare
and so I have to bring this upÖ I probably
brought it up 40 years agoÖ but the great
letter to the Shakespearean actor where Lincoln
says I read the tragedies over and over and
my favorite one is Macbeth.
Thereís nothing like it; itís wonderful.
WALTER BERNS: Wonderful.
QUESTION (continued from the same person):
And then he also says something about well
you actors prefer the soliloquy in Hamlet,
ìTo be or not to beî, but I think the greatest
soliloquy is Claudius, ìOh my offense is
rank and cries out to heavenî.
Why do you think he preferred Macbeth and
why do you think he preferred that soliloquy
to all the others?
WALTER BERNS: Well, Iím just guessing, Joe,
but he fancied himselfÖ Well, he quotes Macbeth,
you know, Duncan is in his grave, and so forth
and so on.
He fancies himself as Duncan and that is all
I can say about that.
LEON KASS: My goodness, I have a more mischievous
suggestion.
And this goes back to the Lyceum address where
Lincoln speaks.
Part of the reason heís so interested in
political religion for the populace as a whole
is because they need something to attach their
loyalty to the republic in order to protect
them against the designs of those rare men
who belong to the family of the lion and the
tribe of the eagle, who would be just as happy
to enslave free men if they were free as he
would be to emancipate slaves.
This is Abraham Lincoln, age 28.
And I think Abraham Lincoln understandsÖ
This is partly one of a small piece of his
inarticulable greatness: He understood himself
to be one such person.
A person of that kind of ambition, but to
be mindful of the danger of that ambition.
And to be mindful of it and to put it under
restraint at an early age makes him a Macbeth,
Macbeth is a great man, but who didnít have
Lincolnís self consciousness and moral compass.
And all of this humble talk, it wasnít that
he was dishonest, but heÖ like nobody that
youíve ever seen, a man who could dissemble
his superiority and make everybody around
him think that he was really just...
WALTER BERNS: Just one of the boys.
LEON KASS: Just one of the boys.
WALTER BERNS: Telling dirty jokes.
LEON KASS: Astonishing.
And not insincere.
It wasnít a put-on.
There was some fire in there, an enormous
fire, which he was aware of in himself, I
think from boyhood.
Which is one of the reasons he didnít become
a professorÖ I think we should thank you
for your kind attention and interest.
Read Lincoln.
And read Walter Bernsís absolutely magnificent
lecture, which you have at your seat.
Itís glorious.
WALTER BERNS: Which was introduced by Leon
Kass.
(Applause.)
