Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: Garry Wills has written a marvelous and meanigful book that adds luster and new life to a speech that most of us heard and did not fully appreciate in school. He suggests that the few words marked a transition in American thought that not many recognized at the time. Taking the ideas back to their intellectual and emotional bases, he emphasises in part just how different the world view was when the speech was given. Language and ideas have chnaged so profoundly that we may not understand that we do not understand. Wonderful!

Rating:
Summary: Good Analysis
Review: In this interesting and very readable book, Garry Wills provides a close reading of Lincoln's Gettysberg Address in order to place it in proper historic context. Wills reviews the circumstances of the occasion and the production of the speech, rebutting a number of common misconceptions. A close analysis of the rhetorical aspects of the Address demonstrate how the Address is rooted in 19th century American interest in Greek rhetoric, the Romantic revival, and Transcendentalism. Most important, Wills shows how the Address exemplifies Lincoln's vision of American society based on a vision of Liberty and Equality with the Declaration of Independence as the foundation document of the nation. This view, which had a long and distinguished history in the first half of the 19th century, became the intellectual underpinnings for the attack on Slavery. Wills may exaggerate when he says that the Address itself became a major vehicle for this transforming view of American political life. It is more likely that the Address is one of many elements that combined to expand the conception of liberty. On the other hand, Lincoln's immense prestige after the Civil War, which was bolstered tremendously by the power of this speech and his second Inaugural Address, acted as a guarantor of the views he advocated.

Rating:
Summary: solid cultural history, weak political argument
Review: This is a well-written book, with moments of eloquence. In the end, though, it is uneven and unsatisfying--and mistitled. The centerpiece is, indeed, the Gettysburg Address, but Wills spends most of his time exploring the cultural background to the speech (e.g. the Greek revival, nineteenth-century cemeteries, Transcendentalism) and discussing Lincoln's other speeches. All this is fine, and often interesting, but the book might more appropriately have been titled, "Lincoln: The Man Whose Words Remade America."

When he treats the cultural aspects of the period and the speech, Wills it at his best. His discussion of Greek rhetoric is truly fascinating. During the early 1800s, the United States experienced a Greek revival, in which intellectual thought moved from the Roman-republic fixation of the Founders to the ancient Greek democratic tradition. Edward Everett, a gigantic figure of the time and the main speaker at Gettysburg, led this transformation, part of which injected elements of Greek rhetoric into the culture. This showed up most prominently in the form of Greek funeral orations (such as the famous one of Pericles), a style that Lincoln adopted in his address. Also interesting is Wills' chapter on the culture of death: how cemeteries became detached from churches and moved into rural areas, how they were viewed as places of reflection and education, how even children were encouraged to participate in this culture.

However, when Wills moves beyond this generally straightforward telling of history into argument, the book grows considerably weaker. Arguing against James McPherson is a dangerous thing to do, and Wills does it twice, declaring that McPherson is wrong to suggest that Lincoln came to view the South, in some manner, as a foreign power and that his position evolved to embrace unconditional surrender and total war. Not that McPherson is infallible (indeed, I'm not entirely convinced on the former point), but Wills' arguments are entirely unconvincing. Moreover, Wills apparently has some ideological axes to grind against the conservative movement he left some years ago. Twice does Wills mention the twentieth century. Both times he attacks "states' rights" or "original intent" conservatives. Criticism is heaped upon Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, and Edwin Meese, and special animus is reserved for Willmoore Kendall. None of these individuals is beyond criticism, but doing so in this book seems out of place and disrupts the narrative flow.

Wills' thesis that Lincoln effected a revolution in American political thought is a sound though not at all original one. To my mind, this book's merit lies in the first half of the book, where Wills delves into the culture of the early 1800s and places the Gettysburg Address within that milieu. The rest of the book, however, proves valuable only as a starting point for controversy, which is not entirely bad.