The Lost Gettysburg Address (30 page)

How
is it then, my fellow countrymen, that those saddening
spectacles do not, at this time and place, oppress with dismay, the heart of
some lonely traveler in a wilderness of ruin?
Why
is it that this face
of Nature is now all radiant with the smile of peace and that these
happy homes of farm and village are yet instinct with human lives
and their loves and hopes? The answer must come from the mute lips
beneath us. Our reasons and consciences shall interpret their dumb
replies.

“We have died, that you may live. We have

toiled and fought—have been wounded and

suffered in keenest agonies even unto death, that

you might live;—live in quietude, prosperity

and in freedom. Oh! Let not such sufferings and

deaths be endured in vain. Oh! Let not such

lives and privileges be enjoyed in ungrateful

apathy towards their benefactors! Remember us, in

our fresh and bloody graves,—as you are standing

upon them. And let your latest posterity learn

the value of the issues in that Battlefield and the

cost of this sacrifice beneath its sod!”

But now, my friends, (speaking again with ourselves, the alive to
the living,) as you once more turn your eyes and thoughts upon the
surrounding scene in its present real condition of Nature un-marred
and Art undestroyed, do you, like the curious traveler in St. Paul’s,
inquire, for the monuments of
these
fallen heroes;
Look around you.
Behold this smiling landscape! See these happy homes!

It would be, however, a very imperfect estimate of the services and
the victory of these Dead, if we should limit our contemplations to
their local and visible results. It will be a delicate task, I know, fitting
to expose on this occasion, the causes and ends of this Rebellion.
This is a
civil War, in present progress
. And the usage in like
ceremonials is so to speak of the Dead, as not to wound, or even to
offend the Living. Nevertheless, my fellow Countrymen, the
Dead
must have justice, at their own graves as in all history
, even though
the living actors may seem to lack our charity, and ourselves to be
wanting in an over-refinement of taste. Our true course, therefore,
will be first of all things, to speak the truth and the whole truth. We
should speak and adjudge, indeed, wholly without partisanship. But,
we must perform these duties without the cowardice, of fearing that
our Catholic truths shall be miscalled, politics. In order, rightly, to
read and record the merits of these Dead, we are compelled, truly and
fully to consider the nature and the ends of that great War, of which
this Battle and these Deaths, were the incidents and consequences. If
we are capable of this simple duty, then shall we all, with the mind’s
eyes, see in the results of that sacrifice, monuments to their
memories, as much grander and more enduring than all these living scenes,
which Treason has been compelled thus to leave standing, or than
any future structures of marble, or bronze, which Patriotism may
freely rear, as great moral principles are more worthy and more
durable than any material things are, or ever can be.

This great War then—let it never be forgotten—is that original,
first, human conflict between Freedom and Despotism. It may be
called, by what lesser name or quality you choose, of those many and
changeful causes and agencies, which lie, or arise more nearly to
ourselves, its actors and sufferers: but, be assured, notwithstanding these
partial truths, that the great, fundamental cause of this, our, War, is
that olden contest between these antagonistic principles, which can
never cease, so long as Mankind shall inhabit this Earth, or shall
include the Few, whose ambition loves power and the Many, whose
blindness, or weakness invites oppression. Nor will it ever end, until
that Millennial day of perfect liberty, when

“every man shall eat in safety

under his own vine, what he plants; and sing

The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors”

We know well enough, my friends, that there are many minds,
so charitable or so perverse, as not to perceive this great, glaring,
luminary—truth. They cannot believe, that, at this era of the World’s
Civilization, Christianity and Freedom, upon this Continent, and
in this Republic, there could be found, numbers of men, so
wrongheaded or else so falsehearted, as to love Despotism rather than
Liberty,—as actually and vigorously to conspire, betray, rebel and
to wage vast war against these essential, fundamental, vital
principles of our Government and Society. Are these men—let me
ask—unconscious and blind to the unceasing workings of general Human
Nature? Do they not believe, those century-bequeathed lessons, that
“Power is ever stealing, from the many to the few” and that “The
Habit of Tyranny makes tyranny a Necessity.” Have they never read
History, nor studied its Philosophy? Do they not know that it is the
maxim of pure philosophy from uniform history, that there never
has existed a Republic, which did not always contain these parties,
the Democratic, the Oligarchic, and the Monarchic? And, have they
not been observing and reflective on what, of our own Nation’s
history, has been passing under their own eyes? And which, now, of
the Sections of this nominal democracy, has uniformly controlled its
National Government? Its
majority
Section? Every man of you knows
better, You all know,—the most unthinking and ignorant amongst
you,—that the Minority—
these same conspirators and their
predecessors in Oligarchic Revolutionism
, have by the aid of Foreign and
Native blind impulses and prejudices, actually monopolized all the
functions of our Nation. And what class of men has controlled the
governing party? Real Democrats? Men trained in, and addicted to,
the principles and practices of equal rights; of justice, mercy and of
freedom to all mankind, or even to all their own race? No—indeed!
And, let us all, in this solemn presence of the Spirit of that God, who
overlooks and we trust, overrules all things, in the immediate,
nearest, presence of those departed spirits, who must
yet
linger around
these, their late tenements of clay,—who float in the very Air here
enclosing us,—solemnized by this fellowship,—elevated by that
presence,—let us all, both recognize and declare the undeniable truth
of our own observation in our own history; that
not
democrats or
republicans, but oligarchs and despots have alone “done this deed
without a name.” Men, who, as private individuals, were born to the
inheritance of unjust power; nurtured by the milk of slaves and
slavery; rocked in their cradles by servile hands; schooled in their lessons
and their sports, into the indulgences of unrestrained passions; and
confirmed by the routine duties of daily business and the enjoyments
of daily society, in a spirit of unbridled willfulness and, who, in their
public and official capacities, have been even yet more indulged,
persuaded and flattered, by Northern Allies panders of both the leading
parties into an arrogance as boundless as the Sea and as insatiate
as the Grave;—
this
is the class of men and of Americans,—which
has alone contrived and perpetuated this blackest crime of history.
Yes. We know, that it is the spirit of Oligarchy, born in the purple of
Despotism, cultured into morbid activities and pampered, at last, into
insane, parricidal, suicidal arrogance, that has contrived, plotted,
betrayed, rebelled and at length, warred against our National existence,
as a Government and against our Liberty, Education, Morality, our
very Civilization, as a people. It is Oligarchy (the privileged few, if
you prefer the word) which, having already, like a thief in the night,
stolen so much power from the many, with the mask, now thrown
aside and turned highway robber,
openly
battles, to usurp not merely
all political powers, but all their shows and symbols. For, nothing
alas! can be more evident than that with the same incongruous
alliance of partizan ignorance with cunning aristocracy, the Southern
minority might have continued to rule us to the end of the century,
if they could have been content with the
substance
of supremacy. It
was only the morbid insanity of their overblown arrogance and lust
of dominion, which impelled them to the Charlestown-conspiracy
against the integrity of their own faction, as an agency in
dissolving the Union. And, so it is, that having slowly and slyly corrupted
our unconscious democracy into a secret but actual Oligarchy in the
Past, they have now, “with a high hand and outstretched arm,” in
open, flagrant, formal, bloody and persistent
war
assailed and
now
endeavor, in its very strongholds, to overthrow Human Freedom, as
a form of government and as a spirit of good! And, my dear
fellow countrymen, here lie in their bloody graves, the slain victims of
that treachery and cruelty! Their blood cries out from all this ground
below us, to all these wide heavens above for God has heard that cry.
And a yet bloodier retribution awaits,—nay now falls upon,—those
wretched men, whose crime neither the Earth can hide nor the Seas
can cleanse.

I know that many will also disbelieve all these truths. Multitudes
of men of all countries and ages live and die under unbroken
delusions to names and appearances. They will ever think that a
particular man is a democrat or republican, because he bears the name and
wears the garb. They can never imagine a Nobleman, or a Queen,
unless they always see them with stars and garters, or a crowned
head? Do they not know that the Duke of Devonshire wears plainer
and cheaper clothes than his own footman? Could they suppose that
a simple, modest little woman, daily clad in a black worsted gown,
with a plain linen collar and a widow’s cap, is
Victoria
? And yet, for
all that, he is the highest and proudest of the World’s Nobility and
born legislator and judge and she,

“A Queen and daughter to a King.”

And they do not, in like manner, remember, that the name and
appearances of a
Christian
, cloaked, to all eyes save one,—Judas
Iscariot? And so, my countrymen, throughout all Nature and all Art,
whatsoever,—just in the proportion as these are genuine and
valuable things, there will always be the counterfeit and worthless. And
of all the manifold shams and counterfeits of this cunning, wicked
world, none have ever been so base and bald, nor yet so successful as
the counterfeited democracy of our own Southern States. Not merely
has this name been,
not the thing itself
. It has been actually and all
the while, the exactly opposite incompatibility and antagonism of
that true thing. It has ever been a positive oligarchy. And their
ruinous heresy of “States Rights” has been from the beginning merely
an oligarchic mask for the conservation and propagandism of slavery
black and white. These things being so;—and as surely as we live, or
as these still forms below us are dead—
they are so
—this battle, in
which they died, was one of a War between Freedom and Despotism,
the most clearly marked, the most stupendous, the most impassioned
and decisive, ever waged or endured, in the lapse of ages. And,—that
being so,—how can we, their survivors, or our posterity, sufficiently
praise and honor their names and memories? As the Israelites
honored Jephtha’s daughter and the fallen heroes at Minnith, or in Gath?
Notwithstanding those victories, the Jews are outcasts upon the earth
and the Religion, for which they fought and fell is a past thing and a
mockery amongst men! As the Greek honored the Dead of Marathon
and Thermopyle? In despite of those wonderful achievements, the
Greeks of today are and for generations past, have been, no better
than the Persian Barbarians, whom they fought, or those they
themselves would have been, if they had been conquered! As the Romans
honored Scipio and his compatriots, who fought or fell at Zama or
Cannae? Why, within a few fleeting years thereafter, the power and
the liberties of the Romans were as completely overwhelmed, as they
could have been, by that Carthage, which they destroyed and made
desolate. As the English, have honored and are honoring the martyrs
at Waterloo? England’s power was no greater after, than before that
event. And France is again supine and under the illegitimate authority
of another Bonaparte-adventurer, whose scepter is more absolute over
France and more menacing to the peace, and independence of other
nations, than whilst swayed by the mighty arm of that first, great
one, of Corsica. In a general alliance and War, contracted and waged
for the sake of a Dynasty and family, its decisive Battle has proved
insufficient to prevent that grand empire, with all its incidents, from
a return to the same name as before.
Not
then fellow countrymen, as
these Nations have ever honored their valiant Dead, must we honor
the sacred dust beneath our feet. Their cause was infinitely higher,
holier, and more potential too in the fate of our nation and our race,
than was that of either of those famed Contests. And we must
glorify them commensurately with that Cause. We must signalize their
martyrdom, commensurately with the difficulty of their
undertaking, the effects and influences of their victory and with their general
personal and social worth as men and citizens, with the dignity and
disinterestedness of the special motives, which prompted them to
volunteer
into these frightful dangers and this certain death and, above
all, in proportion, to that priceless stake, for which they fought and
died. And, intelligently compared in all these respects, with the dead
heroes of this our War, how poor and unequal in the review, pass
the long line of the Gaths and Ashkelons; or the Marathons; and
Thermopyles, or the Zamas and Cannaes and Sanguinettos; or the
Portiers and Hastings, or the Blenheims and Waterloos and all the
other bloody campaigns and fatal fields or recorded history? But let
us, my Countrymen, as rational beings unbiased by personal
ambitions or by National vanities, calmly and strongly
assure
ourselves of
these historic truths.