Contents:
The core elements are indispensable e. Anyone who refuses to think about such issues ends up simply reflecting conventional wisdom. Some of the issues glossed over can be breathtaking. At the end of the book Osborne decries the effect of capitalism on democracy, but this sidesteps a crucial question: Is the free market a core component of democracy?
While there are countries that are capitalist without being democratic e.
December 12, [83]. For example, John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton had employed similar phraseology in Personal tools Log in. It also differs from the drafted text in a number of minor ways. The brutal strongmen and fraudulent caudillo democracies of places such as Mexico and Argentina are held up not as a falling away from some European ideal, but as horrible precursors of the brutality and absurdity of what passed for democracy in "the European graveyard" of the first half of the 20th century. This acclaimed history, published in , charts democracy's course as a concept and form of government from ancient Greece to the 21st century. Retrieved December 18,
China , there are no countries that are democratic without also being capitalist, which suggests the free market is a necessary but not sufficient condition for democracy. As Milton Friedman once argued, the right to buy and sell goods in an open marketplace is not only a right in itself but also allows a significant amount of social and economic activity to occur daily without state intervention, making it a bulwark of a free society even as the financial power of major corporations threatens to corrupt the democratic ideal.
I would have liked to see the book address this tension, but it sidesteps the issue by being both pro-democracy and anti-capitalist.
An intellectual history that ducks hard questions simply ends up pandering to conventional wisdom rather than challenging the reader to think. Of the People, By the People is a useful and well-written history, but without an overarching set of ideas the survey of democratic societies lacks real meat and the brevity of each chapter prevents characters or time periods emerging in bold colours.
Lincoln had come to see the Civil War as a ritual of purification. The old Union had to die. The old man had to die. Death became a transition to a new Union and a new humanity. The phrase "under God" was used frequently in works published before , usually with the meaning "with God's help". Neither of these is located within yards of any of the five or more claimed locations for the dedicatory platform. Yates Selleck was a marshal in the parade on Consecration Day and was seated on the platform when Lincoln made the address.
As pointed out in by retired park historian Frederick Tilberg, the Selleck Site is 25 feet lower than the crest of Cemetery Hill, and only the crest presents a panoramic view of the battlefield. A spectacular view from the location of the speech was noted by many eyewitnesses, is consistent with the Traditional Site at the Soldiers' National Monument and other sites on the crest but is inconsistent with the Selleck Site.
The Kentucky Memorial , erected in , is directly adjacent to the Soldiers' National Monument , and states, "Kentucky honors her son, Abraham Lincoln, who delivered his immortal address at the site now marked by the soldiers' monument. Writing a physical description of the layout for the Gettysburg National Cemetery under construction in November , the correspondent from the Cincinnati Daily Commercial described the dividing lines between the state grave plots as "the radii of a common center, where a flag pole is now raised, but where it is proposed to erect a national monument".
In fact, the precision of the photo-analyses relies upon the coincidence of position between this temporary flag pole and the future monument. Confusing to today's tourist, the Kentucky Memorial is contradicted by a newer marker which was erected nearby by the Gettysburg National Military Park and locates the speakers' platform inside Evergreen Cemetery. In , Senior Park Historian Kathleen Georg Harrison first analyzed photographs and proposed a location in Evergreen Cemetery but has not published her analysis.
Speaking for Harrison without revealing details, two sources characterize her proposed location as "on or near [the] Brown family vault" in Evergreen Cemetery. Frassanito, a former military intelligence analyst, documented a comprehensive photographic analysis in , and it associates the location of the platform with the position of specific modern headstones in Evergreen Cemetery. After taking precise measurements, some using lasers, and countless photographs on Cemetery Hill in , Oakley's team used 3-D animation software Maya to estimate locations for the platform and the photographers who recorded its occupants.
This work remains under development. The Soldiers' National Monument, long misidentified as the spot from which Lincoln spoke, honors the fallen soldiers. Frassanito has documented 1 his own conclusion, 2 his own methods and 3 a refutation of the Harrison site, [] but neither the GNMP nor Harrison has provided any documentation. Although Lincoln dedicated the Gettysburg National Cemetery, the monument at the Cemetery's center actually has nothing to do with Lincoln or his famous speech.
Intended to symbolize Columbia paying tribute to her fallen sons, its appreciation has been commandeered by the thirst for a tidy home for the speech. The importance of the Gettysburg Address in the history of the United States is underscored by its enduring presence in American culture. In addition to its prominent place carved into a stone cella on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.
In the many generations that have passed since the Address, it has remained among the most famous speeches in American history, [] and is often taught in classes about history or civics. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.
Phrases from the Address are often used or referenced in other works. The current Constitution of France states that the principle of the French Republic is " gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple et pour le peuple " "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" , a literal translation of Lincoln's words. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts wrote of the address and its enduring presence in American culture after Lincoln's assassination in April In the modesty of his nature he said 'the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.
The world at once noted what he said, and will never cease to remember it. Kennedy stated in July about the battle and Lincoln's speech: Abraham Lincoln, in dedicating this great battlefield, has expressed, in words too eloquent for paraphrase or summary, why this sacrifice was necessary. The work challenges leaders to craft word responses to celebrate Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, or a related topic. A common American myth about the Gettysburg Address is that Lincoln quickly wrote the speech on the back of an envelope. Other lesser-known claims include Harriet Beecher Stowe 's assertion that Lincoln had composed the address "in only a few moments," and that of industrialist Andrew Carnegie , who claimed to have personally supplied Lincoln with a pen.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Gettysburg Address Read by Britton Rea Nicolay copy, page 1 jpg , page 2 jpg. The Library of Congress. Hay copy, page 1 jpg , page 2 jpg. Retrieved from internet archive version on Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Retrieved September 25, Retrieved October 3, Seeking Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg Address". Perspectives on Lincoln's Greatest Speech. War and American Popular Culture: Retrieved February 22, Retrieved March 7, The Words That Moved a Nation in: A Legacy of Freedom ", Washington, D.
Retrieved August 21, Journal of medical biography. Long Road to Gettysburg. Retrieved December 10, Lincoln's language and its legacy". Retrieved November 23, Gopnik notes, "Gabor Boritt, in his book The Gettysburg Gospel , has a thirty-page appendix that compares what Lincoln probably read at the memorial with what people heard and reported.
Most of the differences are small, and due to understandable confusions A few disputes seem more significant. Putnam's Sons, , Lincoln dignified with a title: This final draft, generally considered the standard text, remained in the Bliss family until The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on July 11, Retrieved November 30, The Lost Art Of Oratory". Liberty Library of Constitutional Classics. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.
Retrieved 24 July The American Monthly Review of Reviews. The Review of Reviews Company, Appleton and Company, Archived from the original on May 5, Retrieved November 26, Webster himself may have been relying on earlier use of similar language.
For example, John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton had employed similar phraseology in Garry Wills's Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America". Retrieved November 9, The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 14, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. There, he asked Lincoln for a hand-written copy of the address, and that manuscript is now the highlight of Cornell University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Lincoln made in March The Everett and Bancroft copies, both of which Lincoln made in February Archived from the original on February 13, Archived from the original on March 9, Retrieved September 15, The War Years New York: II, —57; cited by Prochnow, Victor Herbert.
Great Stories from Great Lives Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Retrieved December 3, Retrieved December 19, Archived from the original on November 1, Noyes '06 and Marguerite Lilly Noyes". Retrieved November 28, Holds Gettysburg Address Manuscript". The Cornell Daily Sun. Archived from the original on January 11, Retrieved December 18, Retrieved September 23, Retrieved December 4, Retrieved April 4, The World's Famous Orations Vol. The Speech at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln". The News Cooperative Takes Shape". Osborne approaches the subject from the historical angle instead, looking at different democracies from that of Greece in the sixth century BC, to the present day.
It had its origins in the system devised in ancient Athens, the earliest in the world which did not first operate through complex relations of kinship and deference, as had others up to then. Parallels would be seen in Rome a few centuries later. Various European cities in the medieval ages followed the model to some extent. For me, however, the book really came alive from Chapter 5, dealing with the English revolution, onwards.
There is arguably a case for tracing a thread in democracy from Charles I and his struggles with Parliament over the Petition of Rights in and afterwards to the present. Incidentally, this section of the book includes as admirably concise an account of the events leading up to the Civil War and its aftermath as I have seen anywhere for a long time.
The two subsequent chapters, on America from the sailing of the Mayflower in and the consequences of the French Revolution in , are also excellent. A commentator writing in a London journal of is quoted as predicting that democracy in America was fated not to last, bearing in mind the experience of other countries elsewhere — 'the despotism of the many occasioning the misery of all, and terminated by the absolute power of the few'.
He had in mind above all the unhappy period in France, where the revolution had been controlled for the first three years by bourgeois lawyers and traders in the Assembly, until the sans-culottes of Paris became impatient for change and took matters into their own hands with increasingly savage effect. This would be repeated in Russia in , when the revolution which put an end to the Tsarist empire was overtaken by the Bolsheviks under Lenin who had no patience with the moderate rule of Kerensky and his followers.
From the nineteenth century, Osborne finds it increasingly difficult to look at national democracies in isolation.