Talk:Gettysburg Address

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Featured article star Gettysburg Address is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on February 12, 2006.
Peer review This History article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated FA-Class on the assessment scale (comments).
Pennsylvania Portal
Gettysburg Address is part of WikiProject Pennsylvania, which is building a comprehensive and detailed guide to Pennsylvania on Wikipedia. To participate, you can edit the attached article, join or discuss the project.
Featured article FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

For older discussions:

An event in this article is a November 19 selected anniversary

Contents

[edit] Krulick of the Greens

About the recent addition of a lengthy statement in the fn about "under God," is Krulick in the same class as Randi and the editor of Positive Atheism on this subject? Especially since Krulick himself apparently thinks the bulk of the evidence is that Lincoln used the phrase "under God?" I'm just not sure if this adds much to the analysis. There are probably thousands of people who have publicly opined on this; perhaps we should limit our examples? Kaisershatner 17:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

(Responding to the above comments and subsequent removal of all comments about, and later by, me, Steve Krulick, FORMER Green Party official: The original use of my comments by an unauthorized and inaccurate contributor led me to edit those comments to be more accurate and relevant to the discussion; that was my only reason for doing so at the time.

Now I note that all references to me and my comments have been excised. This doesn't, in itself, bother me, but I bristle at such elitist comments as the above: "is Krulick in the same class as Randi and the editor of Positive Atheism on this subject?" Well, yes, I think I am, particularly as MY comments brought up two relevant concerns, while Randi's comments are not as germane (we all agree that some of the drafts are "under-God-free," but that doesn't prove he did or didn't say the words in speaking, as Randi seems to be deducing, sans logic), in that there still remains a question of how accurate the note-takers were (I listed several inconsistencies; even the very next footnote had a claim about what all present stenographers wrote, and IT differs noticeably from the accepted "official" version, and changes completely the "nation under God" meaning by inserting, as "nation shall, under God," a strong indication that MY suggestion that the phrase "under God" as parenthetically added, if it was said, merely means "may it be so," as does the stereotype phrase "God willing," and has NO suggestion that the NATION IS "under God" in any theological or officially sanctioned sense.

Further, the key point I made was that even if he DID say the phrase, in any form -- and we still don't have ONE accurate version of the whole sentence! -- its absence in several drafts strongly suggests it was NOT a central or major concern of Lincoln's, but, at most, an aside or spontaneous throwaway line that has been WAY overblown in significance by those with a pro-theistic agenda, either to suggest Lincoln was more orthodox Christian than the bulk of his writings and sayings suggests, or that this sanctions a level of "ceremonial deism" in US life that Lincoln could hardly have anticipated or welcomed. Kryolux (talk) 19:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC))

Were it mine to decide, I would remove from Footnote 33 ("Cliff Walker, editor ...") the recently added parenthetical phrase that begins with "Sure, Lincoln most likely said...". Even if it is legitimate, there are better ways of inserting it. The phrase "In God We Trust" as a national motto was an issue of current debate at the time. In 1861, a Baptist minister in Pennsylvania had written to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase suggesting such a motto. This suggestion made its way to U.S. Mint Director James Pollock in December 1863, and onto an actual U.S. coin for the first time in 1864 on the new two-cent denomination. (http://www.coinresource.com/guide/photograde/pg_02cTwoCentPieces.htm) The issue has been well researched by scholars within the numismatic community over the years. In any event, I do not believe the issue is *that* relevant to the main topic, and as such, I would rather there be less rather than more verbiage about it, even in the footnotes. Typofixer76 18:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why concentrate on Lincoln's drafts?

I am a regular public speaker (a preacher!) and I usually prepare my sermons in a form where they could be read by another. However, when I actually deliver the sermon, it is rarely a word-for-word rendering of the words I have written. In fact, I would state that it never is, except by accident! And if I were to write down the words of a sermon after the event, I might capture some of the changes I made, but probably not all.

Now, Lincoln was clearly an accomplished and able speaker - I don't need to emphasize that; it is a given. But as such, I am sure that when speaking he would react to the audience before him and would almost certainly NOT deliver the address verbatim as written. So why do scholars concentrate on drafts which in the nature of public speaking are pretty well certain NOT to record exactly what Lincoln actually said? A transcript by a listener would be a better source, if such exists.

It strikes me that arguing about what this draft or that draft says is actually beating the air. --APRCooper (talk) 13:50, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Generally, people interested in the Gettysburg Address are curious about what exactly was said. There is no way to know this with 100% certainty, for the reasons you mention above. Whether the eyewitness testimony/shorthand transcript is perfect or not is unknowable at this time, and whether or not the drafts are exact, they provide interesting evidence about the speech, even without being sure of their accuracy. So, yes, it is "beating the air" in the sense that the truth is unlikely to be uncovered, but also thorough reporting of the event to provide readers with all of the available source material. Cheers, Kaisershatner (talk) 14:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this response. Someone (regrettably, an unsigned post) at the top of the discussion pages mentions an eyewitness record of the address by a Mr Charles Hale; that triggered my question. It strikes me that an eyewitness record would be a MUCH better source than the drafts, and wonder why it seems that no-one responded to the person who mentioned it? If there is an eyewitness record, then for the reasons I gave above it would be a far more authoritative source than any draft could be. --APRCooper (talk) 10:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your interest. You will find the Hale account is noted in this article. However, I don't think a single eyewitness report is necessarily more authoritative than Lincoln's own draft(s). We have no idea how reliable Mr. Hale was, and if you check witness you can find links to research about the (un)reliability of eyewitness testimony. I think we should include mention of Hale. About the "focus" on the drafts; they are not merely included as evidence of the wording of the GA, but also as evidence of Lincoln's process in writing it, as well as an interesting historical aspect of how the GA was perceived and used after it was actually given. (ie, that it was wanted for charitable purposes and that copies of it are highly sought after and were actively sought out in the decades following Lincoln's death). If you think Hale deserves a more prominent mention, I'm not against that- dig up some sources and we'll have a look! Kaisershatner (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polemic Word Choice?

Is this sentence from the 2nd paragraph up for debate?

"It would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant,"

In my amateur Lincoln opinion saying that "states' rights were no longer dominant" based on the GA speech might be a little polemic. I don't think the GA even mentions the states' right v. the powers of the federal government debate. The GA proposed that the Civil War was being fought over "the proposition that all men are created equal."

Yes, within that "proposition" the South's belief in States' rights v. federal power is there. But that argument is absent from the actual Gettysburg Address. --Lester113 19:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pop culture refs

IMO this section is hard to manage w/o POV: I like The Music Man, you might like Relient K, etc., and it gets huge and unwieldy. I left "I have a dream" which as referenced is at least another Very Famous American speech. Kaisershatner (talk) 16:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Some examples include Meredith Willson's 1957 musical, The Music Man, in which the Mayor of River City consistently begins speaking with the words "Four score ..." until his actual speech is handed to him. In the 1967 musical Hair, a song called "Abie Baby/Fourscore" refers to Lincoln's assassination, and contains portions of the Gettysburg Address delivered in an ironic manner. In the 1989 movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Abraham Lincoln is snatched from the past by the time-traveling title characters, and addresses the students of San Dimas High School with the words, "four score and seven minutes ago." A young boy is shown memorizing the address for school in the 2002 film Minority Report. In the 1999 movie Dick, the characters Betsy and Arlene say "four score and seven years ago our forefather did something I don't know…"an example of how Lincoln's actual words, "our fathers," are frequently misquoted and misused. In the 1990 movie "Kindergarten Cop", Arnold Schwarzenegger's character (John Kimble) teaches his kindergarten class to recite the Gettysburg Address while working undercover as a kindergarten teacher. On a lighter note, one of comedian Bob Newhart's early standup routines has himself as a public relations agent talking to Lincoln, by telephone, advising the President on how to continue to appear rustic and unsophisticated. He exhorts Lincoln not to write speeches on White House stationery: "I keep telling you, Abe, use the backs of envelopes!" Peter Norvig developed a rendition of the Gettysburg Address in Microsoft PowerPoint. In an accompanying essay he explains how this example illustrates the difficulty of using that medium to make a "truly inspiring presentation." Christian rock band Relient K named their fifth album Five Score and Seven Years Ago. The band wanted a 'five' theme, as it was the first album of theirs with five band members, and it was their fifth album. The first track is about a man with a conspiracy about Lincoln's death, and the "Four Score and Seven Years Ago" being changed to "Five Score and Seven Years Ago" also worked well because it was the band's fifth album and their first album came out seven years prior to its release. A voice over at the end of the song "Believe" by Yellowcard quotes, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." The 1984 film, Red Dawn, ends with a voice-over describing 'Partisan Rock'; a monument honoring the Colorado teenagers turned guerrilla warriors who "during the early days of World War III" gave their lives "so that this nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

Kaisershatner (talk) 16:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

List of problems with this article. Also, noted them at FAR.

*A number of references needed in history section, note the fact tags I added.

Cites added except this needs to be changed or cited:"Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" summarized the war in 10 sentences and 272 words, rededicating the nation to the war effort and to the ideal that no soldier at Gettysburg had died in vain.[citations needed]" Kaisershatner (talk) 14:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

*More information is needed about citation 10. This is a reference to the New York Times.

I think this is now cite16? Anyway, provided full biblio info for the Times article. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

*There are too many pictures jammed together on the right of the article.

I suppose we could work on this, I happen to disagree that there are too many pics, so I will leave it for now. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
The number of pics is fine, try and space them out over the article by putting them on both sides. KnightLago (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

*A number of referenes needed in the Address section.

Everything here was covered except the Nicolay copy section. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:17, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The Lincoln's sources section contains a one sentence paragraph.
Fixed. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Reference needed in the five manuscript section./References needed in Nicolay section.
Put those two together; as above, only Nicolay still needs citing. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The writing in the individual letter holders sections is not great.

*References needed in the Under God section; this also poorly written with a long uncited quote. *The myths and trivia section needs to be incorporated into the article. Per the manual of style and WP:TRIVIA specifically, such sections are to be avoided.

  • The in popular culture section needs to be completely reworked also.
  • Sources have problems, see: 6, 8-13, 15-18, 20, 22, 24-33.

KnightLago (talk) 15:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mencken, redux

I put back the Mencken criticism, I know we debated it before and I would be happy to discuss again. Other than the contemp. news reactions, there is little mention of any criticism of the GA, and certainly Southerners (and apparently libertarians) have some negative things to say about it. Even if we disagree, I think it is not NPOV to ignore the existence of criticism of the GA, however, misguided it may appear to be. I'd be interested in feedback.Kaisershatner (talk) 15:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I can think of several problems with including the quote. In the first place, you reference the Lew Rockwell website for the source, but this obviously has provided only an excerpt from some larger source to which it provides no reference. If the quote is even accurate, would the full context cast possibly a different light on Mencken's observations? Was he really writing about the Gettysburg address or was this paragraph strictly a small part of a much wider attack on Lincoln or some other political issue of the time? Lew Rockwell is a political advocacy website and not a reliable source for history -- unless you find a source from a reliable secondary source referencing the quote with the type of information you would normally expect to be included in a footnote, the quote does not belong in a Featured article.
Second, a quote from a non-historian is very effective, descriptive, and sourcefull, Depression-era political essayist. If historians consider the quote relevant, then surely they will have referred to it in their own works.
As far as NPOV, if the only criticism (other than contemporary criticism which is covered or non-reliable neo-Confederate criticism) that you can come up with is this eighty year old quote, then it appears you are giving way too much undue weight to Mencken. You need a reliable secondary source that describes what actual contemporary criticism there is concerning the address itself as opposed to Lincoln in general (which is how I read Mencken's quote). Leaving the quote in would require, in order to balance the POV, an explanation of exactly why Confederate soldiers were not fighting for self determination. Do you really want to open up this particular article for that type of debate?
At the least, since as you acknowledge the quote has been discussed before, it should not be included unless there is a consensus reached that it should be included. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi Tom, thanks for your (fast!) reply. I will take out the Mencken quote for now based on your logic. Keep in mind I have no particular axe to grind, I assume my hundreds of edits here are some evidence of my positive interest in the GA. It does bother me, however, not to include any criticism AT ALL, to me it seems the weight is all on the admiring side. I guess I can keep looking for better sources, though. Kaisershatner (talk) 16:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC) PS- No, I really don't want to open this article to that kind of debate, I really don't want a five paragraph pro/anti/Lincoln/slavery explosion here. I just want to make sure we aren't leaving out something important. Kaisershatner (talk) 16:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

What little modern American criticism of the Gettysburg Address that exists, principally from libertarians and modern defenders of the Confederacy, focuses on an alleged dissonance between Lincoln's espousal of freedoms and the conduct of the Civil War: author H.L. Mencken, in "Note on the Gettysburg Address," wrote that "The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves."[1]

Kaisershatner (talk) 16:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of purging any criticism of the GA from the article, despite my love of the speech and basic agreement with it. So I've been looking into better sourcing for the anti-view. It is heavily laden with anti-Lincoln, pro-Confederacy, anti-Federal, the Lost Cause people, and even pro-Slavery views, but there you have it.

  • The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War

Thomas Dilorenzo. p 113-4. "It was equally absurd for Lincoln to argue that representative government would 'perish from the Earth' if the Southern states were permitted to secede peacefully. In the 'Gettysburg Address' Lincoln claimed that the war was being fought in defense of 'representative government' but fact exactly the opposite was true." He then cites the Mencken quotation as the best expression of this viewpoint. I will keep looking. Kaisershatner 16:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Here's a crushing review of DiLorenzo:[1] Kaisershatner 16:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
It turns out that neo-Confederate is the term for many of the people who have voiced criticisms of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. I am wading through stuff trying to find something right for the article, am I alone in this? Kaisershatner 20:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think you are going to find much other than neo-confederate sources. There is certainly criticism of Lincoln and his policies by legitimate historians, but I am unfamiliar with any that focus on the Gettysburg Address itself. The closest I can come think of is those sources that focus on the time line projected by Lincoln -- 87 years puts the formation of the nation in 1776 and makes the Declaration of Independence as the most significant document of American nationality. This contrasts with folks who would argue that it was the ratification of the Constitution that actually created the United States. Presenting this debate might be interesting, but I personally think it is beyond the scope of this article. Tom (North Shoreman) 20:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contemporary Critisism of the speech

At http://www.acws.co.uk/archives/misc/quotes.htm at the bottom of the page, has some comments from the Chicago Tribune, George McClellan, and the NY Post on their reaction to the GA. They are very negative toward the speech. This shows that the speech was not universally embraced. Leobold1 (talk) 19:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Connection to Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech

I've copied the start of this discussion from my talk page. --Chris (talk) 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi - the use of "score" as a measure of anything went out with the 19th Century - you really don't think that Martin Luther King Jr, while standing in front of the statue of Lincoln, coincidentally used the formulation "five score"? Kaisershatner (talk) 22:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Re Dr. King's speech, I'm not disputing that there is a connection (though I don't really see a strong one) but right now it's unsourced original research. I'm just requesting a reference for that claim. --Chris (talk) 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Here's more circumstantial evidence, besides the location of the speech (in front of Lincoln), the use of "five score" to echo the GA, also it seems as if MLK had the GA directly in mind: "King would speak last, and four days before the March he told Al Duckett, a black journalist who was ghostwriting a forthcoming King book on the Birmingham campaign (eventually titled Why We Can't Wait), that his August 28 oration needed to be "sort of a Gettysburg Address."["http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/Jul/15-590366.html] I will keep looking for other citations. Kaisershatner (talk) 14:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

(Added by user:StatesManship):"Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address, portions plagiarized from the General Prologue to the first translation of the Holy Bible into English in a.d. 1384 by the Reverend John Wycliffe, the "Morning Star" of the Reformation where was written "The Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Lincoln omitted the reference to the Bible and failed to credit his source, likely from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations edition of a.d. 1863 that quoted Wycliffe. Lincoln's comments at Gettysburg, known today as the "Gettysburg Address", were secondary to other presentations that day by such notable speakers as Edward Everett Hale, yet came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history, even if one of the most memorable lines for which "Honest Abe" is most remembered was "borrowed" or taken without attribution from an English priest."

I think we need a citation for this; also I would want to amend the language a bit - "plagiarized" is a pretty strong term. Kaisershatner (talk) 17:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Cannot" vs. "can not" - revisited

I raised an issue 2 years ago, to which nobody disagreed, but it still went nowhere and I got sidetracked. I still think it’s important, and I’ve revisited it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#"Can not" vs. "cannot" in the 1860s. Interested editors may care to see what’s going on over there, and maybe contribute their thoughts. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Purpose

In the infobox, the purpose of the address was given as, "To give the Union soldiers a redefining of what they were fighting for". This strikes me as particularly ugly phrasing. I've replaced that with "To redefine the purpose of the Union in fighting the Civil War." This seems less clunky; if it's also less accurate, I hope somebody will fix it! Dricherby (talk) 12:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Political significance

Hilltoppers, I revised your addition, and added some fact tags. Specifically, I also deleted some analytical sentences without citation: "Hence, his decision to go to Gettysburg and urge the Union to "highly resolve" that the dead there "shall not have died in vain" was Lincoln's way of saying that if the "Copperhead" peace Democrats get their way, then the men who there gave the "last full measure of devotion" would have done so for no reason at all." Also, this totally unsupported para - did Mrs. Bixby start to support the war because of the GA? Not according to the wiki article on her. Also, attributing the 1864 election results to the GA seems to me to be a stretch: "The political power of Lincoln's rhetoric was undeniable. Even a Copperhead with the misfortune of Mrs. Bixby would be moved by Lincoln's call to "be here dedicated to the unfinished work" that men like her sons had thus far so nobly advanced. Perhaps the most important political consequence of the power of the Gettysburg Address is that Lincoln indeed won the election in 1864, thus assuring that the war would continue until the victory had been achieved." If I am wrong, please let me know, I would be happy to discuss. Kaisershatner (talk) 13:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)