Garry Wills - Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Re-Made America

PRAISE FOR LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG:

With 272 words, Lincoln changed the effective meaning of the Constitution, introduced a new style of public rhetoric, and inspired Garry Wills to a uniquely thorough and fascinating analysis of the text and context. Seldom have so few words excited such scholarship, penetrating analysis, and brilliant explication.

Governor Mario Cuomo

Another tour de force that will cause much discussion and argument.

Library Journal

[Wills] prose has muscle and voice, and his thinking often takes him, and us, to unexpected and delightful places. The brilliance of his argument in Lincoln at Gettysburg comes in his exploration of the historical background to Lincolns vision and his literary analysis of Lincolns style.... Contrary to Lincolns fears, the world has noted, and long remembered, what he said there.

New York Newsday

Mr. Wills thesis [is] bold and exalted.... Impressive.

Washington Sunday Times

Wills recondite and rewarding argument does demonstrate that Lincoln used words to make that most material of thingsa battle: flesh and bone and steel and shotinto an intellectual event, testing the durability of a nation dedicated to a proposition. The deservedly large audience that Wills has found for his book is heartening evidence that the nations ability to appreciate the elevating rhetoric of the politics of ideas has not atrophied in the recent absence of such politics.

New York Daily News

In Lincoln at Gettysburg [Garry Wills] has produced an extraordinary work that changes the way we see the world.... An intensely moral book with a powerful promise.

The Miami Herald

Brilliant: Unwritten law requires reviewers use this word at least once about every Garry Wills book. How much truer this is of Lincoln at Gettysburg . Only real inspiration could turn a book with so much flapdoodle into an indispensable introduction to what the Gettysburg Address was all about. Whether he ties the address to the culture of death or transcendentalism in Lincolns day, Wills throws forth his learning like a spectacular fireworks display. His prose captivates, his erudition daunts.

Lexington Herald-Leader

A brilliant book that surpasses anything written before about the Gettysburg Address... offers stunning new ideas about the structure of the speech, its subliminal message in Lincolns time and its historical meaning for America today.... Full of riches.

Tampa Tribune

A celebration of political genius.

Detroit News

Lincolns eloquence and passion continue to speak to us today and serve as an inspiration.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

In precision and economy of language it emulates Lincolns masterpiece.

The New York Review of Books

It is refreshing to see Garry Wills sally forth boldly in Lincoln at Gettysburg to give readers a great man, great moment view of history, with a vengeance. He is true to Lincoln and his age.... When independent duplication occurs in historical studies, celebration is in orderespecially when a brilliant man of letters reaches a large literate public with an important book.

Christian Science Monitor

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TEXTS USED

SW is preferred to CW where the same text is in both, for Fehrenbachers more up-to-date editing. I occasionally (lightly) modernize punctuation, for two reasons: (1) Many Lincoln textse.g., those of the Douglas debatescome only from newspapers, whose punctuation has no authority. (2) Even in Lincoln holographs, punctuation is for speaking purposes and/or nineteenth-century convention (e.g., commas before and after clauses), which is sometimes more confusing than clarifying. No other changes are made in the textswhich, however, are sometimes printed colometrically to bring out Lincolns effort to balance rhetorical members (cola) . The text of the Gettysburg Address used here is Lincolns final one, called the Bliss Text, printed as D 1.

N ot all the gallantry of General Lee can redeem, quite, his foolhardiness at Gettysburg. When in doubt, he charged into the cannons mouthby proxy. Ordered afterward to assemble the remains of that doomed assault, George Pickett told Lee that he had no force to reassemble. Lee offered Jefferson Davis his resignation.

Nor did General Meade, Lees opposite number, leave Gettysburg in glory. Though he lost as many troops as Lee, he still had men and ammunition to pursue a foe who was running, at the moment, out of both. For a week, while Lincoln urged him on in an agony of obliterative hope, Meade let the desperate Lee lie trapped by a flooded Potomac. When, at last, Lee ghosted himself over the river, Lincoln feared the North would not persevere with the war through the next years election. Meade, too, offered his resignation.

Neither generals commander-in-chief could afford to accept these offers. Jefferson Davis had little but Lees magic to rely on for repairing the effects of Lees folly. (Romantic Southern fools cheered Lee wherever he rode on the day after his human sacrifice at Gettysburg.)thousand dead or wounded or missing behind them, had reason to maintain a large pattern of pretense about this battleLee pretending that he was not taking back to the South a broken cause, Meade that he not let the broken pieces fall through his fingers. It would have been hard to predict that Gettysburg, out of all this muddle, these missed chances, all the senseless deaths, would become a symbol of national purpose, pride, and ideals. Abraham Lincoln transformed the ugly reality into something rich and strangeand he did it with 272 words. The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration.

The residents of Gettysburg had little reason to feel satisfaction with the war machine that had churned up their lives. General Meade may have pursued Lee in slow motion; but he wired headquarters that I cannot delay to pick up the debris of the battlefield.

Even after most bodies were lightly blanketed, the scene was repellent. A nurse shuddered at the all-too-visible rise and swell of human bodies in these furrows war had plowed. A