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137 9 The Gettysburg Address Revisited Orville Vernon Burton In Frank Capra’s classic 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a disgraced and defeated Senator Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) is quitting. His optimistic outlook dims when his idol, Senator Paine (Claude Rains), tries to include him in a corrupt scheme, and it shatters completely when the bad guys finger Smith himself as the guilty party. With two suitcases in tow, he hightails it out of town, thoroughly disenchanted with politics , and maybe no longer so naïve. Before leaving, he makes his second visit to the Lincoln Memorial. As Smith stares, we also see emblazoned across the large screen familiar words: “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Reading that address, a teary-eyed Smith finds the will to persevere and take on government corruption. In making the film, Capra, who was born in Sicily in 1897, moved to America in 1903, and was naturalized in 1920, stated that the soul of the film would be Abraham Lincoln: “Our Jefferson Smith would be a young Abe Lincoln, tailored to the rail-splitter’s simplicity, compassion, ideals, humor, and unswerving moral courage under pressure.” Capra set up the above scene earlier in the film when Jimmy Stewart as the new junior senator tours D.C. and admires monuments and statues of the founding fathers. As he climbs the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing in the background, he notes the second inaugural address, but more compelling is the Gettysburg Address. A young lad of about eight reads the address aloud with the help of an elderly man, presumably his grandfather. A stately, dignified-looking African American 138 Orville Vernon Burton enters the Lincoln Memorial. He doffs his hat and stands reverently before the words to the Gettysburg Address. Capra honored these words, and Americans continue to hold them dear.1 The bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War posed in a crucial way what clearly became persistent themes in American history: the character of the nation and the fate of African Americans (read large, the place of minorities). Consequently, scholars have been vitally interested in the Civil War, searching out clues for the identity of America. Lincoln articulated that identity and meaning in the Gettysburg Address. After the Battle of Gettysburg, called by historian Eric Foner “the greatest battle ever fought on the North American continent,” and the siege of Vicksburg, called by James M. McPherson, dean of Civil War historians, “the most important northern strategic victory of the war,” it remained an open question as to whether the Northern public would continue to give political support to Lincoln and the Republican Party. Now, when victory might be a matter of time and determination, the politically astute Lincoln knew that the public could still withhold its support of the army so necessary to grind down Confederate opposition. Lincoln, therefore, welcomed the invitation of David Wills, a Gettysburg banker, to attend the ceremony at Gettysburg battlefield and make “a few appropriate remarks” as an opportunity to address the nation. Wills had been appointed an agent of Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania and in that role had provided order to a chaotic environment in which souvenir hunters had been looting the battlefield for prized mementos. He also tried to coordinate the effort of various states to memorialize the honored dead at Gettysburg. As a resident of Gettysburg, Wills was aware of the tourism possibilities of the battlefield and also recognized the benefits of national attention that the dedication would receive with Lincoln present. Lincoln’s address was meant to provide a fitting summary to other remarks that would address the battle in more detail. The heavy lifting would be the lengthy oration by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, widely considered America’s preeminent orator.2 The Gettysburg Address was situated within a political environment in which Lincoln sought to defend the Civil War, and he did so by linking the current struggle to the revolutionary tradition. America had been created by the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln suggested, and whether the country could live up to the promise of that document was the central question of the entire war. Moreover, the purpose of the war had expanded from simply preserving the Union, because, in order to save the union, it was necessary to...

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