POLITICAL ORATORY

In this internet age, where we are bombarded with information from a host of people talking a lot, but saying little (most politicians, this blog perhaps?), it is reassuring to know that we can still be inspired by the past.

One such source of inspiration is the Gettysburg Address. Apologies to American readers, who often learn it by heart at school, but the address is not as well-known on this side of the pond as it should be. To recap, the 3-day battle of Gettysburg in early July 1863 was the biggest of the American Civil War. Buoyed up by crushing victories at Fredericksburg in December and Chancellorsville in May, the South's Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania in order to cut the North's main east-west railroad and take Washington. The invasion was stopped at Gettysburg, at huge cost; 23,000 casualties, more than a quarter of the Army of the Potomac's strength. Yet the South lost even more men, 28,000, more than a third of its (smaller) army, not least because it did most of the attacking in a misguided bid to obtain a knock-out blow. The battle did not mean that the South had lost the war, which rumbled on for almost two more years; but it did mean that it could no longer win it.

The following November, President Abraham Lincoln was asked to give a speech at the consecration of the huge new war cemetery in Gettysburg that had been formed in order to house the dead. An audience of nine thousand turned up, and Lincoln was accompanied by foreign ambassadors, high-ranking military officers, nine state governors, members of Congress, and three of his own Cabinet. The warm-up act was provided by Edward Everett, a well-known orator and former President of Harvard, who spoke for two hours. After he had sat down, Lincoln stood up, pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and spoke for just two minutes. This is what he said.

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion -that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Politicians, beat that. If you compare it with (say) George W. Bush's unfortunate speech from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, "closing" the Iraq War, then you will know what I mean. And you will know why, contrary to what Lincoln himself stated, we do long remember what was said that Thursday morning, 19 November 1863.

Walter Blotscher