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http://www.wnyc.org/books/9336

Her voice takes some getting used to, but I’m really liking Sarah Vowell’s writings of late. And w00t for the thought of another girl who’s as nerdy about the Civil War as I am: “The Gettysburg Address is more than a eulogy. It’s a soybean, a versatile little problem solver that can be processed into seemingly infinite, ingenious products. In this speech, besides cleaning up the founding fathers’ slavery mess by calling for a “new birth of freedom,” Lincoln comforted grieving mothers who would never bounce grandchildren on their knees and ran for reelection at the same time. Lest we forget, he came to Washington from Illinois. Even though we think of him as the American Jesus, he had a little Mayor Daley in him too. Lincoln the politician needed the win at Gettysburg and, on the cusp of an election year, he wanted to remind the people explicitly that they could win the war if they just held on, while implicitly reminding them to use their next presidential ballot to write their commander in chief a thank-you note.

Privately, Lincoln has mixed feelings about Gettysburg because he’s certain the war could have ended right here if only General Meade had not let General Lee get away. According to a letter written right after the battle, Lincoln is “deeply mortified” that “Meade and his noble army had expended all the skill, and toil, and blood, up to the ripe harvest, and then let the crop go to waste.” Because Lincoln is a good man, he does not say this in front of the families who came to the cemetery to hear that their loved ones “shall not have died in vain.” Because he is a good politician, he looks on the bright side. Though I personally suspect that in Lincoln’s first draft, the line about how “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” was simply “Goddamn fucking Meade.””

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