Fred's Book Club: The Great Man Speaks.

Good day, fine folks, and welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the book feature that falls on Wednesdays, known in some disreputable corners as Hump Day. The writers don't actually have humps, or at least we have not found any, and we've looked. And the subject of today's book was way too tall to have had any bend to the spine -- otherwise his legs might not have been long enough to reach the ground. His birthday is this Friday, February 12.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America is a remarkable account of Lincoln's most famous speech, given at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. This book is the first Pulitzer Prize winner I've profiled, because an awful lot of books that win that prestigious prize are lousy, but not this one. Wills's account is a compelling and scholarly lesson in history and oration. It may seem that a speech of 272 words, like the famous address, would hardly remake an afternoon let alone a nation, but Wills makes his case with enormous detail and intriguing historical research.

The book's not long -- 189 pages with another 115 pages of backmatter in my edition -- but it packs a lot in. Wills's comparison of the Gettysburg Address to the orations of Pericles are startling, or were to me. You may admire Lincoln all day without guessing how steeped this autodidact of a president was in classical forms:

The compactness is not merely a matter of length. There is a suppression of particulars in the idealizing art of Lincoln, as in the Greek orations. This restraint produces the aesthetic paradox that makes these works oddly moving despite their impersonal air. The Greek orator does not refer to himself except as answering the city's ordinance. Most often, he uses the plural "we" (hemeis) of all the citizenry -- as Lincoln does. Nor are the Greek dead referred to by name (except in one late example). The fallen are usually just "these (men)" (hoide) -- as Lincoln speaks of "what they did here" or of "these dead." The Epitaphios, as Loraux puts it, is "an oration that ignores individuals." Restraint deepens passion by refusing to give it easy vent.

As Wills points out, Lincoln's address doesn't mention slavery, or even Gettysburg by name. There's no mention of the Confederacy or a reference to the enemy combatants.    

Part of the perfection of Lincoln's prose is his use of reversals, which sets a pattern of birth-death-rebirth. 

The survivors at Gettysburg draw life from death, as their forefathers had sown life in the earth of this continent. The survivors take "increased devotion," even though the fallen men gave "the last full measure of devotion." The increase is not only over what the survivors felt before; it is something that goes beyond the ultimate of what the fallen gave. 

It's a beautiful examination of Lincoln's text, which in subsequent chapters Wills shows in context of the "culture of death" throughout the West at the time. Later he makes his case that this address, more than any other Lincoln speech, sets the tone for a new federal-centered vision of the nation rather than the states-centered vision that led to this war. Here I suspect the liberal Wills oversells -- not that the Civil War did not lead to greater federal prominence, but that the address was of a piece with Lincoln's entire career, and can't carry the whole weight on its own.

For me, one of the best things about the book was its serious examination of a lot of myths about the speech. Lincoln did not wing it; he did not write it on the back of an envelope, or on the train from Washington. Lincoln worked hard on his remarks, and may have consulted Secretary of State William Seward on them the night before the ceremony. Seward had helped him with the First Inaugural. 

Further, the audience didn't get furious because Lincoln's speech was so short. Lincoln was not supposed to be the principal speaker of the day -- former secretary of state Edward Everett, president of Harvard, considered one of the finest speakers of the time, had that honor, and he spoke for more than two hours. I'd have been grateful if the next speaker was brief after that.

I was amazed to discover that Abraham Lincoln did not have a rich, earthy, sonorous voice like that of Almighty God, or at least Raymond Massey, as his height and mournful face would suggest. Actually:

Everett's voice was sweet and expertly moderated; Lincoln's was high to the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended some Eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advantage from his high tenor voice -- carrying power. If there is an agreement on any one aspect of Lincoln's delivery, at Gettysburg and elsewhere, it is his audibility. 

We'll end here with the Gettysburg Address itself, and let you read it through in honor of our great president's birthday this week. And as you do, remember that this is the man that is not considered good enough for the sneering jackals who run San Francisco's public schools.

Four 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.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow-- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Sheer MADness.

Years ago, when I was a tot working at my first job in publishing, an older editor told me about MAD Magazine's means of dealing with the election of 1960. The battle between Kennedy and Nixon was too close to call. When this gentleman, who was a kid himself in 1960, saw that MAD was the only magazine that called the election for Kennedy, he was amazed. He knew magazines didn't come out like newspapers, on a daily schedule; they went to press weeks earlier. How did they know Kennedy would win? 

What they'd done, of course, was run their cover-dated January '61 edition (on newsstands right after the election) with different front and back covers, so the newsies could display whichever side was appropriate to who won. 

Genius. 

Nixon's victory was on the front, whereas the Kennedy cover (and the issue's last twenty-one pages) were printed upside down on the back, according to the Grand Comics Database. 

That was back when MAD was able to poke fun at everything, not just conservatives, although naturally a gadfly humor outfit would have been particularly sharp in targeting the mores of the day, so it would by nature go after the squares. 

Well, nowadays no one is square, or everyone is square, or something, so all MAD could do was go after Trump like everybody else. I haven't looked at an issue in years, but I guarantee they never went after the Wokesters, the worst humorless scolds of the modern day, or else we would have heard about it. The Times would have run an article about how "problematic" MAD had become. And it might have saved the magazine by keeping it relevant. 

But no, so no surprise that it shut down last year, at least as a regular print magazine. The classroom clowns have turned into the real squares, the real bluenoses. What can you expect after a sixty-seven year run? Rolling Stone is a dull establishment piece of crap now. As humorist Anne Beatts said, “You can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde."

Anyway, 1960 was a whole different world, and I'm hoping that in 2021 we'll be headed somewhere nicer than we are in 2020, but I don't see today's election making that happen. Time to pray for the United States, and that "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

VitaminFred congratulates Abraham Lincoln upon his election as president. We were with you all the way, Abe!

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln  was born on this day in 1809, into poverty of a kind we only see in the United States in the immediate aftermath of some kind of disaster. For his family, that was life. We can hardly imagine anyone rising from such humble beginnings to the presidency, partly because our prosperity has erased for most of us the memory of such a thing.

Part of what makes Lincoln so fascinating are his various contradictions. He was a religious doubter who became devout in the crucible of the Civil War; he was a man of action who suffered from painful and sometimes debilitating depression; he was a failure who became our president during the nation's greatest crisis and led us through it. Above all, he was a humble man who still harbored burning ambition -- no man rises to the presidency without it. (Not even Gerald Ford.)

Because of his stature in our history, as well as his actual stature (still our tallest president, still the guy with a beard but no 'stache), and his famous stovepipe hat, he is the easiest president to depict. Look, here's a Lincoln now:

As of this morning, IMDb lists no fewer than 422 portrayals of Lincoln, not counting stage, video games, or automobile advertisements. For contrast, there are only 233 Hamlets. Henry Fonda, Hans Conried, Dennis Weaver, Hal Holbrook, Gregory Peck, Jason Robards, Tom Hanks, Sam Waterston, Raymond Massey, and Daniel Day-Lewis all played Lincoln. Some actors, like Frank McGlynn Sr., basically made a career of it.

Massey in Abe Lincoln in Illinois

And then there's Gottfried.

Lincoln was the first president from a new party since Jefferson, the first president killed in office (or anytime else), the only president (to date -- hi, California!) to deal with a civil war; he was a genuine hater of slavery, a believer in the principles of our nation's founding; he was a slow mover but a fast thinker, a man of great physical strength and mental strength to match; a man who grew up in both North and South; a man with a dopey military career who was president during our deadliest military contest; an autodidact and, amazingly, an honest lawyer. Unless we have a president who single-handedly repels an invasion by Martians, it's hard to think of how a president could ever top Mr. Lincoln.

A tip of the stovepipe to you, Mr. Lincoln; thank you for all you did for our nation.