Happy sesquicentennial birthday to the Gettysburg Address

Four score (4 x 20) and seven years ago I was a quarter century from being born (87 – 62).

So I can’t very well let this day slip away without some comment on this blog. I began the Gary Will’s book about the Address a few years ago but quit a few chapters in. I got the point though. Lincoln really did give the US a new birth of freedom by seriously applying the Jeffersonian declaration of man’s equality to the nation he was busy sewing back together. To me its a large tragedy that the Grand Old Party has turned its back on Old Abe.

I enjoyed this short interview with the Columbia University historian Eric Foner and the reading of the Address by a rotation of NPR voices that followed.

I also heartily recommend the movie “Twelve Years a Slave.” Claudia and I drove to the Twin Cities after the election to catch our breath and see the movie before it got to Duluth. It makes clear the helplessness of identifiably black Americans in the pre civil war South.

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