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[ ≥≠ ] n o v e m b e r 3 Brought Forth (Pen and Sword) Hope alone is . . . ‘‘realistic,’’ because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught. —Juergen Moltmann Today it rains and rains. This morning few visitors came to the Visitors’ Center to look at Civil War artifacts. I went in only to get out of the rain. November is a lousy month. Just so no one is fooled by there still being some colorful leaves lingering on a few of the trees, a cold wind with driving rain comes to knock them o√. It is as if the dark sky and rain tell us: ‘‘This is 1999. The millennium is ending. It’s over. Now what?’’ I stood looking out the large windows toward the Soldiers’ Cemetery. The pavement in between glistened black. A few cars sliced past. I wonder whether it rained on this date about 135 years ago, November 3, 1863. Abraham Lincoln knew he was coming here—right across the street, to that cemetery. Very likely he started writing his speech today. Four score and seven years ago. The beginning is the most famous part. Repeat those words, and people know what you are referring to. The next words are not well known. They are strange, but more important. Our fathers brought forth. Everyone knows, more or less, what ‘‘four score and seven’’ means, but fathers bringing forth is another matter. I wonder whether Mr. Lincoln thought of that odd phrase today. It would make sense if he did, because one way to look at the Gettys- b r o u g h t f o r t h ( p e n a n d s w o r d ) [ ≥∞ ] burg Address is as a definition of heroes. It is an elegy, of course, but to whom? To Lincoln’s heroes—but what are heroes? That question was Lincoln ’s first problem in the speech. Were the Union dead more than mere victims? Their families might have wondered, might have thought most of all that their dead sons and husbands were simply to be mourned. Lincoln could not let that go on. Grief is necessary; Lincoln would refer several times to ‘‘these’’ dead here in these graves in front of him, but he could not allow the Union dead to remain victims. They must be seen as heroes. Heroes have always inspired people. Lincoln and the United States had a war to win. But you could not simply declare the dead to have been heroes and tell the people to go out and do likewise. What are heroes? The more I have studied the Civil War, the more convinced I have become that leadership made the di√erence between defeat and victory. For the past generation and more, it has been fashionable to emphasize the role of the common person. The idea arose in France with studies of medieval peasants, and it is altogether fitting and proper for countries in which equality is an ideal to remember that the common person bears the burdens of history, works the fields, and marches into battle. But in the American Civil War, both North and South mustered good soldiers into their armies. Abraham Lincoln knew that. Nevertheless, he was declaring the living and dead of one side, not the other, to be heroes. Why? We would be naive to think that Lincoln imagined heroes—the Founding Fathers, the Union soldiers—to have been perfect. It is we, the sophisticated hotshots who refuse to consider someone a hero if faults have been discovered about him or her, who are childish. (Consider the reputation of JFK.) But Lincoln understood that heroes are made, not born, and to a degree they are made by us. They become heroes when we distill and use what was heroic from their imperfect lives. Again, people must be inspired by leaders, who are themselves inspired by heroic examples. The great civil war in which the country was engaged on November 3, 1863, was in doubt and could turn out either way. That was not only because both sides had good soldiers. Both sides possessed resources equal to their goals, too. Later, the country would come to believe that it had been inevitable that the North would win because the Union had more men, money, railroads, and factories. But the South lost no battles for lack of hardware. The North assumed an immense task: subdue, control, and convert a hostile area...

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