Gettysburg Address

[maharba]

I think that in the past many-score years, well intentioned educators and the press wanted to make simplistic hero's out of Lincoln and other historical figures. But the result often when it resonated into the ears and mind of a child, it came across as almost cartoonish ("When I was your age, why I walked a dozen miles to school, uphill each way"). Lincoln was not a cardboard cutout, unable to predict and plan, merely acting spontaneously. His lifelong habit of noting interesting articles in newspaper and journals, trying out various turns of speech, and saving those away for the proper occasion show that Lincoln planned long and well.

Again, trying to break back the validity of the Wycliffe Bible claim, several folks insist that phrase is simply not there (of the people, etc), but that the claim has been copied and recopied over and over. And I have noticed in the past, that some researchers became heated in their citation of Daniel Webster 1830, and also another speech by Rev. Theodore Parker at an 1850 Boston antislavery rally (the phrase of, by, for the people). What Lincoln might have missed hearing or reading, men like Seward would have known. And I think even the Gettysburg Address was vetted and edited a bit by Seward and others.

Your reference to the French Revolution language was interesting. Jefferson was reviled by the Federalists for supposedly too close an affection for the French. It is almost a wonder that Jefferson did not insert Liberty, Equality, Fraternity into some of the founding documents he formulated.