Jackie Gingrich Cushman - The Essential American: 25 Documents and Speeches Every American Should Own

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Table of Contents

To my husband Jimmy Cushman, Junior, and our children Maggie and Robert

FOREWORD

THE BEST WAY TO LEARN ABOUT AMERICA IS TO STUDY THE WORDS OF those leaders who wrestled with the great issues and the great decisions that came to define us as a country and a people.

In the history of the United States, certain speeches and documents are so appropriate, so fitting, and so worthy of study that they become instantaneous fixtures in the American canon. We remember exactly where we were on the day we heard them, we listen to or read them over and over again, and we teach our children and our grandchildren why they are important.

However, sometimes a groundbreaking address goes unnoticed by contemporaries.

When Ronald Reagan passed away in 2004, the Washington Post recalled his 1987 address at the Brandenburg Gate as one of the most famous speeches of his presidency. In the shadow of the Berlin Wall, which divided Communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin, Reagan had issued a now-famous challenge to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, daring him to tear down this wall. But, the Post only saw fit to run a single news story about the Friday speech in the following days newspaper, and much of the rest of the press followed suit. The story had disappeared by the following Monday.

The Posts op-ed page had a few more things to say. Staff columnist Frank Getlein penned a column entitled Keep Germany Divided; The Dirty Little Secret Is That It Means a Europe at Peace. His colleague Richard Cohen opined that Reagans message was out of vogue, noting in the streets of East Berlin, rock fans shout the name of Gorbachev. Its a foreboding sound of the future to which the Reagan administration has turned a tin ear.

It wasnt until the Berlin Wall crumbled twenty-nine months later that the Brandenburg Gate speech received due credit as one of the most important addresses of the late 20th century. We finally recognized Reagans appeal to tear down this wall as a watershed moment in which he called on the world to remember that the Cold War was just as much a moral and spiritual struggle as a geopolitical one. But at the time, the press passed it off as just another speech.

In November 1863, one of the darkest periods of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln approached the dais at the military cemetery dedication at the Gettysburg battlefield. Despite being commander-in-chief, Lincoln was not the top-billed speaker; that honor went to former Massachusetts governor and Harvard president Edward Everett, who had prepared a two-hour address.

Lincolns invitation was an afterthought, and his brief remarks were just one of many events on the agenda for the dayhardly the setting for a groundbreaking speech.

However, what followed was a profoundly simple yet unforgettable articulation of the American spirit, rivaled only by the Declaration of Independence for encapsulating the principles by which we live.

Though the Gettysburg Address is today read by every American school-child and regarded universally as perhaps the best two minutes of oratory in our nations history, even it was hardly celebrated in its time. The Chicago Times knocked the speech, noting that the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.

The speeches that have the most enduring appeal are not always the ones that were the most eagerly hyped or anticipated in their time. Nor were all of them considered immediate classics. Subsequent events catapulted many of these speeches into immortality many months, years, or even generations after their delivery. Leaders regarded as erratic or quixotic in their time have been deemed prescient with the benefit of hindsight.

Regardless of context or immediate reception, the twenty-five historic American speeches Jackie has assembled in this volume share three common themes.

First, our greatest leaders understand that there is something exceptional in the origins of our nation and character of the American people. Their most powerful speeches recognize this fact. Even in moments of extreme somberness or vulnerability, like that which prevailed during Franklin Roosevelts address to the nation following the Pearl Harbor attacks, or while confronting the nations flaws, such as occured when the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. confronted the legacy of racism on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the fundamental decency and character of Americans is affirmed as a guidepost for hope.

FDR knew better than to wallow in self-pity or succumb to righteous anger when he spoke to the nation following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The most effective way to lead in Americas soberest hour was to appeal to the innate resilience and vigor of the American people:

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forceswith the unbounded determination of our peoplewe will gain the inevitable triumphso help us God.

Even as Dr. King courageously denounced the scourges of racism and segregation, he invoked the hopes and language of the Founding Fathers and called upon Americans of 1963 to live up to the words of these exceptional men:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

In perhaps the darkest moment in American history since Pearl Harbor, President George W. Bush glowingly recapitulated what he had seen in the days following September 11tough, unwavering Americans who had graciously risen to support one another and were eagerly prepared to defend their security.

In the normal course of events, presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the union. Tonight, no such report is needed; it has already been delivered by the American people.... My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of union, and it is strong.

The second common theme of these works is that each does not merely lecture, but challenges the audience, the American public, to rise and engage as citizens. Our most enduring icons, such as John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt, understood that American democracy requires an active and engaged citizenry, and used their speeches to compel and inspire.

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