The use of the word “conceived” has the most impact on this speech to be able to convince the people for a new freedom. Its kinda funny though that in today’s modern times, the more modest and honest the speeches are, the more convincing they will be.
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While the analysis itself is excellent, I’m more interested in your final paragraph:

“Democracy is feasible, but it requires beatitude. Otherwise, it is worse than worthless: it is merely prelude to anarchy. It is truly tragic that awareness of the need for beatitude should come at the expense of so much blood.”

Interpreting the first sentence literally, the government of the people, by the people is not possible without the blessing of a deity.

Is this a conclusion drawn from the interpretation and analysis of Lincoln’s closing statement? Or is this an analytical summary of the speech?

If the former, it would open the door to a whole discussion on the contradictions in this country about the separation of church and state. If the latter, it shows a remarkable ability on your part to get to the heart of a body of work.

Either way, that is the best statement about Democracy that I’ve ever seen.

Cheers,

Mitch

Great post. I have one question, what do you make of Lincoln’s use of dedicated, consecrated and hallowed? Something Upham observed in his lecture on this speech is that Lincoln is going back and forth between “French” and “German” words. The “French” words are softer, and appeal to a more educated audience. The “German” words are harder, and appeal more universally between the educated and uneducated.

I like what you say here about the Declaration being the more universal of the two Founding documents; it is certainly true. Do you agree with Lincoln’s assessment of the Declaration — that it was the “golden apple” and the Constitution the “silver frame,” the apple being made to sit in the center of the frame? It would seem extraordinary to say that the Constitution is simply an ordinary document, but I’m not sure…If I remember correctly, Fred Douglass didn’t connect the two documents together in quite the same way Lincoln did, and it seems like he felt the Constitution was intrinsically good.

I thought you would find interesting the work of the (sadly popular) ‘progressive scholarship’ being done on Lincoln right now. Garry Wills, for one, says in his book review of Lincoln that he did the nation “the favor of being fruitfully wrong.”

In short, this guy would have sided with Judge Douglas in the debates, and it seems at least to me that this is all politically charged. By saying that Lincoln was wrong – albeit benevolently wrong – that the Founders really meant “all men” when they said it in the Declaration, the significance of the Founding can be marginalized by making the Washingtons and Jeffersons look like hypocrites. In that you have the ability to set up some weird sort of evolving notion of justice, as if Lincoln did not restore old principles but invented new ones. Thus history has been a happy unfolding of progress, each generation a little more liberal (and better) than the last.

Here is the link to Will’s review:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750

I think that Ashok is right that Lincoln felt Jefferson might have been wrong that governments get power from their “consent of the governed.” Jefferson surely felt they should, of course, but consider Hamilton’s contrast between our experiment of government by reflection and choice versus the old accident and force, then think of how a dictator gets his power.

So maybe it is not the case that Jefferson was wrong, but that governments typically did not have the consent they needed.