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 there
after, 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.
And first you will observe that by long hasty marches, wearied and disheartened by late defeats, they were surrounded and assaulted by a much larger Army, recently victorious and sanguine with all the assurance of another victory. Those alone who have experienced these disadvantages can truly estimate them.
They saved two great states with their great Metropolitan cities, from certain capture, pillage, and general conflagration. I do not here ignore the excellent moral character of the commanding General of that Army, nor those of many of his subordinates. Neither do I intend to apply any of these censures or epithets of contumely to such men, nor to the great body of the Southern people. I know too well the many virtues and noble traits of these gentlemen and of that class of our countrymen, so to adjudge them. And, I am sure, I love truth too much to so cruelly asperse them. But in their conduct of this civil war, as in the conspiracy which brought it on, the wicked purposes of vile and desperate politician traitors have overruled the good dispositions and infatuated and misguided the honest impulses of their Army-officers and their people. To them and them alone do I apply these harsh but truthful terms. To return however to our direct topic; when we remember, that of these States and cities, were Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and consider the Geographical positions of Maryland and Baltimore and the peculiar relations, which large numbers of their citizens have to the cause and war of the invading traitors, the influences of that victory must, in countless regards, grow wonderfully in our estimate.
And then again, that campaign and Battle were designed by the Foe and expected by ourselves and the World, to prove decisive of the fate of our National Capitol. That Foe and that World hoped and fully believed also, that its capture would decide and close this grand War, by the establishment and universal recognition of this new National Power of a Slavery-Oligarchy. We know better. We know, that the loss of a capitol in a Democracy, (unlike a similar casualty in Monarchies,) does not reach the seat and life of its governmental power. Our powers of war or peace,—thank God and our fathers—are not concentrated in Washington, or any other city or site. They pervade and flow from the whole body of this great people, throughout the length and breadth of this long and broad land. This is no War of President and Cabinets. The President and his Secretaries, with all the great powers and dignities, with which our Constitution endues them,—are the mere creatures of time and place, the passing official breath of our nostrils—nothing and infinitely less than nothing, when compared either with the fixed deep purpose of the American People for the prosecution of this War, or with those immutable and priceless principles, which justify and make that purpose. The capture of our National Capitol; the burning of its Archives; the interruption, for a few months in the offices of one of its Administrations—these petty, transient casualties of war, indeed!—to make the term and end the being of this Democracy! Why; let them seize and destroy our National City—its wood into ashes and its Marble into sand—Let them imprison—hang—burn our President with all the heads and hands of the Departments;—Let them leave on Earth, no trace, in type or Scroll, of all the Acts of our Congress—of all our Treaties with Foreign nations—nor of the American Constitution. Yet, are we still a Nation. Foreign Monarchy must understand,—Domestic Oligarchy must re-learn, that our National Being flows on forever in the stream of moral principles and not through any chain of printed deeds or written charters. And, can they erase from the National Mind, that record of those principles, which Reason has graven there? Can they burn out from the National Heart the traces of that undying love for truth and liberty, which God implanted in his mercy and our Fathers watered with their blood,—our Mothers with their tears? No—indeed can they not! Let what may befall external forms and dead matter; the eternal soul of Freedom fights this War. And she shall conquer;
For Freedom’s battle once begun
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son
Though baffled oft—is ever won!
And it would have been far better for the shallow demagogues, who conspired themselves and us into this War; if they had first advised themselves of its intrinsic nature and its consequent destiny. This Earth will not reverse the courses of its daily rotations upon its axis of calm air, nor its annual circuit through yet calmer space, the free winds will not cease to breathe the balmy breath of flowers through all its vales; Niagara’s heavy floods will not hush its roar and stop its swift plunge, Old Ocean’s deep breast will never lull the mighty music of his ceaseless throbs and resounding, to please a junta of insane slavery oligarchs! No more will God’s equally natural and equally sure laws of Civilization and Liberty in all the stillness and brightness of their beauty and all the genial warmth of their undying life, either pause, of flow backwards, into the chaos of black Barbarism and of red Despotism, at the bidding of these puny and palsied Canutes of South Carolina and Mississippi.
Nevertheless; my countrymen, and although we may not, even in our funereal eulogies, claim for this martyr-blood the actual decision of our National fate, nor the fate of freedom throughout the World, it would be difficult for us, short of these results to overestimate the ruinous consequences of that capture by the Traitor Army.
We come now to consider the characters of these Dead. And what manner of men, were they who here fought unto bitter death? Were they professional adventurous mercenaries, who hire out their bodies and the chances of their lives and souls to any leader and any cause of other lands, offering them the highest pay and the most rations? Were they the soldiers, who are impressed or conscripted and dragged unwillingly by their own governments, into the privations and dangers of war? No truly they were not! On the contrary of all this, they were the bravest and the best of the young and old, rich and poor, of our whole people, and the representatives of all its best classes. The honest day-laborers, the skilled and industrious mechanics, the prosperous merchants; the sober, solid farmers; the rising and risen Lawyers, physicians, ministers and Statesmen, the students and professors of our Schools, Colleges, and Universities and the men of greatest wealth and the highest social positions, who, when this War was begun
against the interests, principles and life of our Nation, “with wings as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love,” swept into the ranks of the National Army. And when, before this war, was ever seen such a quality of men, acting and suffering as the common soldiers in the field? When before, did their own free wills alone impel the soldiers of an entire Army, consciously and purposely, into longest campaigns and bloodiest Battles? And, if you pass from this comparisons of individual characters and motives, to that of the aggregate results in the respective numbers of different Armies; only think of the stupendous fact—the sublimest of all history,—the spectacle of more than a Million of Freemen, freely fighting for Freedom! Of that grand host, these lowly dead, were a most noble part.
The Lost Gettysburg Address Page 22