Eloquence at Gettysburg and Daniel Webster
LIBERAL ideas boldly advocated have ever been the unique and unfailing thesis of democratic spokesmen. Demosthenes on the Bema, Cicero in the Forum, Patrick Henry in the House of Burgesses, all assailed monarchy and oligarchy with the dauntless courage that inspires men of fierce determination.
The few-score words pronounced by Abraham Lincoln on a great and melancholy occasion, November 19, 1863, ran true to the liberal tradition, stemming from the spirit of liberty cradled in Faneuil Hall and conceived in the timeless axiom that men are by nature ordained to seek happiness unrestricted by royal decrees. Couched in plain and unaffected language, the Address has been enshrined among the masterpieces of eloquence in response both to popular appraisal and expert judgment.
This analysis, designed to evaluate the Address in terms of Daniel Webster's concept of genuine eloquence, necessarily calls for definition. Before coping with eloquence in the abstract, however, let us observe Webster in the performance of his effort on the rostrum. To this end we go to the old Supreme Courtroom in the Senate wing of the basement of the Capitol in Washington. The year was 1818. The case before the court involved Dartmouth College at a time when it was embroiled in a rash of bitter controversy that challenged its status as a private institution under threat of the legislature of New Hampshire.
For an unbroken stretch of four hours "Black Dan" propounded issues and marshalled evidence, arraying each word in relentless confirmation of the integrity of contracts and of the unconstitutionality of any action that violated the sanctity of private charters. He spoke without benefit of note or brief in calm conversational voice. As the minutes sped a thunderclap of silence settled on jurists and spectators. The speaker continued his remarks. Then, his case completed, he came to a momentous pause. It was sheer drama. Poised and commanding, he glanced blandly at the jurists and toward the opponents of the College in attendance. The groundswell of silence thrilled the audience to the quick.
"This, sir, is my case," Webster presently remarked. "It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in the land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout our country, of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of human life. It is more. . . . Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own . . . and apply it to such ends or purposes as they propose . . . ? Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak, it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. ... It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are thosewho love it!"
Such was Webster's peroration in part, addressed to Chief Justice Marshall and representing a departure from the logic of hard argument to the vehemence of gentle feeling. Decision of the case when later announced favored the College. Masterful oratory had contributed to the outcome. The decision affected the future course of American jurisprudence by establishing a precedent based on fundamental principles of human behavior. American oratory also felt the impact of the decision. Text of the argument presently appeared in anthologies and became a model of forensic oratory for students of law. Chauncey A. Goodrich, Professor of Oratory at Yale University, who made the trip to Washington from New Haven for the purpose of hearing Webster's argument, paid the speaker high rhetorical praise.
But how define oratory of this peerless quality? The query takes us to Webster's personal statement of the art of rhetoric. "When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions," he specified, "when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than that it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. . . . True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. ... It must consist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. . . .
"It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.
"The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object, this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action; noble, sublime, godlike action." „
To equate Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with this Greek-inspired formula is to fix one's attention unremittingly on the occasion, on the subject, and on the speaker's imperative objective, for it is the pressure of these forces that impel the speaker onward to the domain of true eloquence. Lincoln's pragmatic objective at Gettysburg pleaded for action toward restoring the Union of States to its original constitutional status as created by the fathers. It was this purpose that inspired the men in blue to repel Pickett's mad charge at Gettsyburg and to die in their tracks if that became necessary. Lincoln's First Inaugural Address made this motive clear enough, although it took a special message from Lincoln to Horace Greeley to make it clear to him. Actually, the sanctity of the Union was the one dominating indoctrination of his life.
But this is only half the story. In a larger sense, and acting on the concept that the cause is ever greater than the event, by restoring the Union to its original character Lincoln would demonstrate to all skeptics of self-government that free men possessed the capacity to govern themselves though confronted by a grave moral issue like slavery. This was the superlative purpose that prompted Lincoln at Gettysburg.
Clearly, the most cogent word in the text of the Address is testing, testing whether any system of self-government could be maintained permanently against the vicissitudes of time and place and human behavior. If the divided house failed to be reestablished, that failure itself demonstrated the vulnerability of the democratic process. The course of history raised the challenge. Democracy failed in imaginative Athens. It failed in realistic Rome. The Union of States ventured by the fathers, in short, constituted a political laboratory where democracy was under examination and test. Would it fail the test? Its fate rested with the American citizen. The crowned monarchs of the world looked askance at the undertaking. Against this background of doubt Lincoln climaxed his remarks at Gettysburg with the plea that free men dedicate themselves anew to the ideals of self-government that democracy might not perish from the earth. In his plea were overtones of Emancipation.
The fear of national disintegration over slavery with the subsequent fear of a loss of faith in self-government, was a thesis of depth and long-standing with the immediate heirs of the founders of the Republic. William Lloyd Garrison would g0 so far as to sever the Union in his zeal for freeing the slave. Resistance to this sentiment was vocal and vigorous. Among the statesmen Daniel Webster was most generous in giving of his time and talent to plead the cause of unity. Poets, clerics teachers, and lay citizens also took to the forum on the issue. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for example, turned aside from the main drift of his thesis in his poem, The Building of the Ship, to exploit this sentiment:
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all her fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
More recently, Will Henry Thompson captured Lincoln's high objective in his ballad, The High Tide at Gettysburg:
They stood, who saw the future come On through the fight's delirium! They smote and stood, who held the hope Of nations on that slippery slope Amid the cheers of Christendom.
President John F. Kennedy highlighted the theme in his message to those assembled at Gettysburg, November 19, 1963, commemorating the anniversary of Lincoln's address. He wired: "Lincoln did indeed give us a new birth of freedom, but the gods of liberty and freedom, the obligations of keeping ours a government of and by the people, are never ending. On this solemn occasion let us all dedicate ourselves to the perpetuation of those ideals of which Lincoln spoke so luminously. As Americans we can do no less."
Eloquence did prevail at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, by the terms of Webster's prescription. Lincoln's address synthesized the spirit of the occasion, the subject of the hour, and a great democratic ideal, into a superb pattern of words. It was the President's clear conception of these essentials outrunning the deductions of logic and inspired by a noble cause that constituted eloquence at Gettysburg.
Mr. Wiley, who is Professor Emeritus ofSpeech at Ohio State University, is a longtime student of the life and speeches of Lincoln.He retired in 1957 after 42 years onthe Ohio State faculty.
