Post-Gettysburg Americans fail to seize progressive opportunity
Editing, added emphasis, comment by
Carolyn Bennett
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| We cannot dedicate … |
It
is for us to dedicate ourselves to the great task before us
At the time of Gettysburg, says historian Allen Guelzo, “‘The
entire future of democracy was hanging in the balance.’”
What of this Union 150 years from the Battle of
Gettysburg?
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| … We cannot consecrate |
World Socialist Web Site reports on the third day
commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg that tens of
thousands of visitors toured the battlefield along Cemetery Ridge where
Confederate forces were defeated on July 3, 1863. Jerry White spoke with some
of the visitors about contemporary U.S. democracy, slavery, and the state of
the Union. This is some of what they had to say.
Lloyd Cavanaugh
Resident of Hartford City, Indiana
Veteran of 26 years U.S. military service
‘I came to Gettysburg because so many people died here
fighting for basic rights.
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| … We cannot hallow this ground |
‘Today the government is only for
the rich, not the people.
‘It shouldn’t be that way.
‘The rich have to give up some but
all they are doing is taking and taking.
‘It started with Reagan when he
broke the unions. I lost my job then.
‘Something is going to give; things
are going to break loose in this country.’
Aleixo Gomes
 |
| The brave who struggled here have consecrated it… |
Leader of Civil War Club
Grand Valley State University
Near Grand Rapids, Michigan
‘It used to be a rich man’s war, a poor
man’s fight;
‘Now war is a rich man’s hobby
‘Sometimes it is claimed that the
South (in the 1800s) was fighting only for state’s rights — but it was the
right to have slaves. Several states seceded, giving one of their reasons as the
threat to slavery.’
Debt example of 21st century slavery: ‘The immense economic
and political power slaveholders had in the 1860s has parallels to the power of
the banks today.’
Instead of directly controlling humans as private property, banks
control ‘financial property [and], for all practical purposes, [people are]
enslaved when … indebted to them.’
 |
| … far above our poor power to add or detract |
Tyranny, shroud of
secrecy: ‘…Slavery used to be defended by the law. What happens when the
government breaks the law? The law doesn’t define our morality.’
Dave Gamble
Worker at the Homer Laughlin China Company
Resident of Newell, West Virginia
‘What Snowden did is great.
‘People have the right to know and
nothing the government does should be kept secret.
‘When documents are released (e.g.,
those released by Snowden), there are usually blacked out parts.
‘This isn’t a free country.
‘People fought the South because
they wanted rights for everyone.
‘They didn’t want anybody to be
someone else’s property.’
Jim and Andy
Service workers
Gettysburg
‘We are not fans of the government.
Illusion of liberty: ‘They’re supposed to be for the people but they are for a few rich men.
‘They give us the illusion of
freedom.
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| Battle of Gettysburg Map |
‘… Both political parties are
controlled by Wall Street and the stock market. A few years ago Harley Davidson
[maker of millions] told workers the company had no money to pay decent wages
and cut the majority of jobs.
Indifference, dissent rising:
‘There are huge protests and revolutions in Egypt and other countries but we
let the government get away with everything. … It’s coming here though. You can
see it with the Occupy Wall Street movement but it got bought off and petered
out.
‘The government is supposed to govern with the consent of
the people—well, we’re going to have to have a different kind of government.’
|
I
|
n his New York Times opinion piece “What Gettysburg proved,” American historian Allen Guelzo
wrote of what was essential to Lincoln.
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| Union Flag Stars and Stripes |
Uppermost in Lincoln’s mind, Guelzo said, was that in 1863 “the
American republic was … a dangerously isolated democratic flower in a garden
full of aristocratic weeds, and if the Civil War succeeded in sundering the
United States into two separate pieces ─
…it would be the final confirmation
that democracies were unstable and unworkable pipe dreams.
In Lincoln’s view, expressed in 1861, the “central idea
pervading this struggle,” Guelzo interpreted, “[was] the necessity … of proving that popular government is not
an absurdity
…for ‘if we fail, it will go far to
prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.’
“That ‘proving’ was what Gettysburg – and its roll of dead –
provided,” he said.
 |
| Confederate Flag Stars and Bars |
“In November, when Lincoln came to dedicate a national
cemetery for over 3,500 of the battle’s Union dead, it seemed to him that the
willingness to lay down life in such numbers simply to preserve a democracy was
all the evidence needed to illustrate democracy’s transcendent value.
“In their sacrifice, ‘the brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here’ ─
…had shown that democracy was
something more than opportunities for self-interest and self-aggrandizement,
…something that spoke to the
fundamental nature of human being itself,
…something that arched like a rainbow
in the political sky.
 |
| Lincoln Memorial Washington, D.C. |
Professor Guelzo
suggests that, if there is a Gettysburg legacy, it reaches “beyond even the
limits of the Civil War.”
It is “a legacy for democracy itself [a war yet to be won]: a ‘new birth of freedom.’”
 |
| May she forever wave
Incorruptible
with honor and honestywith justice for all |
Excerpt LINCOLN’S
words: “…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here …
It is rather for us to be … dedicated to
the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain—that this nation … 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.”
|
America’s
|
founding settler-leaders and presidents did indeed leave a
legacy of papers and principles, promise and potential. It is a shame that
later Americans and the unchecked powerful and corrupt, in private and public
sectors, are squandering America’s promise and potential.
Sources and notes
“Historian Allen Guelzo speaks on the 150th Anniversary of
the Battle of Gettysburg … ‘The entire future of democracy was hanging in the
balance’” (interview by Andre Damon: In an interview with World Socialist Web
Site reporter Andre Damon, Dr. Guelzo contrasts the popular interest in the
150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg with the scant attention paid to
it by establishment politicians and the media. He places the battle in its
world historical context, explaining that the victory of the North was crucial
for the success of democratic forms of rule in the United States and
internationally,” July 4, 2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/04/vide-j04.html
See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9eK1YJqodQ&feature=player_embedded#at=13
“Third day of Gettysburg anniversary: Discussions on Snowden
and the decay of democracy” (by Jerry White in Gettysburg), July 4, 2013,
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/04/gett-j04.html
“What Gettysburg Proved,” (by ALLEN C. GUELZO), Disunion
July 1, 2013 ([published July 3), http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/what-gettysburg-proved/
Allen C. Guelzo is a professor of history at Gettysburg
College and the author of Gettysburg: The
Last Invasion.
The Gettysburg Address is a world-famous speech delivered by
President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (November. 19, 1863) of the
National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the decisive
battles of the American Civil War (July 1–3, 1863).
Excerpt: “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 honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation …
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.” American Rhetoric,
Online Speech Bank,
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm
See also: Gettysburg Address. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia
Britannica Deluxe Edition. Chicago:
Encyclopædia Britannica.
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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