*EPF111 09/09/2002
The Gettysburg Address to Be Read at 9-11 Commemoration
(New York Governor Pataki Will Read Lincoln Speech) (900)

By David Pitts
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- One of the highlights of the September 11 commemorative events in New York is expected to be Governor George Pataki's reading of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, considered one of the greatest speeches in the English language.

Contacted in Albany, the state capital, a spokesperson for the governor explained that Pataki chose to recite the Gettysburg Address at the event honoring those who died in the September 11 attacks because "Lincoln's speech is always inspiring," even though it was given long ago during a conflict far different than that faced today. "The governor gave the keynote speech in Gettysburg in 1998 at a ceremony marking the 135th anniversary of Lincoln's address," the spokesperson added. "Governor Pataki is a student of history and a great admirer of Lincoln's message."

Lincoln's address -- just 272 words -- was given in the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg after one of the bloodiest battles of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). But the nation's first Republican president spoke not to the passions of the moment, instead choosing to stress the universality of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Said the historian Stephen Oates in his book, "Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind The Myth," it was "a national rededication to the principle that all men are created equal, a new resolve to fight for that proposition and salvage America's experience in popular government for all mankind."

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 'all men are created equal,'" Lincoln said in the opening lines of his speech. Without discussing directly a primary issue over which the Civil War was fought -- the enslavement of African Americans in the Southern states of the Confederacy -- Lincoln implicitly extended the American promise to all races, skillfully seeking to close the gap between ideal and reality in American life. In a key phrase, Lincoln refers to the "unfinished work" that lay before the American people.

In addition to substance, many biographers have remarked on the beauty of the language used by Lincoln -- a level of eloquence rarely equaled. The poet Carl Sandburg, author of perhaps the most definitive work on Lincoln, wrote that the speech was smooth and melodic despite the toughness and urgency of its message. "His cadences sang the ancient song that where there is freedom men have fought and sacrificed for it, and that freedom is worth men's dying for," Sandburg added.

The year was 1863. The Civil War was far from over, a victory for the Union by no means assured. Lincoln was invited to Gettysburg to say a few words at the consecration of a cemetery for the Union war dead. A great battle between Union and Confederate forces had taken place in the area earlier in the year resulting in 45,000 dead and wounded from both sides. Lincoln left Washington at noon on November 18 and arrived in Gettysburg that evening. At 10 o'clock the next morning, he led a procession to the cemetery and shortly thereafter spoke the words that echo through the ages. By all accounts, he spoke for just three minutes.

The timelessness of Lincoln's message on that day, his view that great struggles essentially are about ideas and ideals, is a recurrent theme in the many biographies of the nation's 16th president. "By his words, Gettysburg becomes more than a scene of carnage, rises far above the waste and slaughter," wrote J.G. Randall in his book, "Lincoln the President," and becomes "a challenge to a society founded on the idea of democracy." He added: Lincoln's remarks represent "the undying flame of aspiration, the perpetual light that points, albeit from a battlefield, to peace."

Garry Wills in his book, "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America," makes the point more directly. Lincoln's achievement in the speech was to change the way that Americans looked at their own Constitution. "They walked off from those curving graves on the hillside," he wrote, "under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely." Lincoln, Wills continued, "undertook a new founding of the nation, to correct things felt to be imperfect in the founders' own achievement," particularly their acquiescence to the continuation of slavery in the South.

To be sure, Lincoln's closing words on that long ago November day were addressed primarily to his generation of Americans. But they also spoke to succeeding generations as well, and ultimately to the aspirations of all mankind:

"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."

Governor Pataki will recite the Gettysburg Address in its entirety at Battery Park in New York City. It is one of many events being held in New York and across the country on September 11 as the nation remembers the people who died a year ago and, to use Lincoln��s phrase, ponders "the unfinished work" that lies ahead in this 21st century struggle.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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