Lincoln's Address Following the Battle of Gettysburg

In the words of H.L. Mencken, "The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history.... It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense" (quoted by Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events [2000], page 198). More to the point, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is one of the best examples of propaganda to ever have been foisted upon the American people. That it has survived for so long in the popular opinion as a speech of great statesmanship aptly demonstrates the power which words, however speciously strung together, have to effect the emotions and minds of those who hear them.

The only photograph taken of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg.

However, the Address, when delivered on 19 November 1863, did not receive the admiring reception by its original audience as it does in our day. In fact, some evidence exists that the now-familiar words contained in what we know as the Gettysburg Address were not actually spoken by Lincoln on that day in Pennsylvania. Ward Lamon, who was a close companion of Lincoln during his years as President and who sat beside him on the platform, testified that the Address "is not the speech Mr. Lincoln made at Gettysburg.... I state it as a fact and without fear of contradiction, that this Gettysburg speech was not regarded as a production of extraordinary merit, nor was it commented on as such until after the death of Mr. Lincoln." He then recalled Lincoln's words to him after he had delivered the speech and resumed his seat: "Lamon, that speech was like a wet blanket on the audience. I am distressed about it" (Recollections of Abraham Lincoln [1895], page 173). John Nicolay, who was Lincoln's personal secretary during the war also said of the speech that "it was revised" (A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln [1911]). continued...

In the Land of Cotton: An Immigrant to Dixie Examines the "Lost Cause"

I was born, raised, and "educated" in Southern California. In the California public school system I was sustained on a steady diet of anti-South propaganda and revisionist history. I was taught that the Republicans, with "Ole Honest Abe" Lincoln at the helm, were responsible for "saving the Union" from those who sought to destroy it in order to perpetuate and extend Southern slavery. As do millions of patriotic American schoolchildren every year, I memorized the Gettysburg Address, listened with rapt attention to stories of the Underground Railroad, and thrilled to read of the military exploits of such Northern Generals as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.

Influenced by a steady barrage of sixty second sound-bites on the evening news and the elaborate, yet fanciful, "reality" concocted by the movie-moguls in Hollywood, a Southern drawl would invoke instant images in my mind of sheet-clad imbeciles dancing around a burning cross, or some beer-bellied, tobacco-spitting "redneck" hurling racial slurs at "persons of color." The "Mason-Dixon Line" was to me an unscalable wall of separation between the socially sophisticated and open-minded North and the morally degenerate and bigoted South. It was a line I never wanted to cross.

However, about ten years ago, I had a "great awakening." Everything that I had been taught about the South and the so-called "Civil War" of 1861-1865 -- more accurately known as the War for Southern Independence -- started to crumble as I began to read what the Southerners themselves had to say. All my life I had been told one side of the story -- that of the victor. But don't the "losers" have a story to tell as well? Was the War really fought over the issue of slavery, as we have been told, or was it fought for other reasons? continued...

If the Constitution and the Union "established by our forefathers" were "restored" then there will be no truer supporters of that union and that Constitution than the Southern people. Every brave people who considered their rights attacked and their Constitutional liberties invaded, would have done as we did. Our conduct was not caused by any insurrectionary spirit nor can it be termed rebellion, for our construction of the Constitution under which we lived and acted was the same from its adoption and for eighty years we have been taught and educated by the founders of the Republic and their written declaration which controlled our consciences and actions. - Robert Edward Lee

The Genesis of Lincoln
by James H. Cathey
originally published in 1899
paperback; 320 pages

The biographers of the deified sixteenth President of the United States have chiseled into the stone of accepted history a falsehood. It is claimed that “the old rail splitter” was born to Thomas Lincoln and his bride, Nancy Hanks, in Hardin county, Kentucky three years after their marriage. To the contrary, the author of this fascinating book demonstrates, with an impressive collection of eyewitness testimonies and collaborating evidence, that the man known to the world as Abraham Lincoln was actually the product of an illicit relationship between Nancy Hanks and a married man named Abraham Enloe, in whose western North Carolina home she worked as a servant in the early years of the Nineteenth Century. Included in these pages are several photographs of various members of the Enloe family which bear such a striking resemblance to Lincoln that even his most ardent admirers in the last century were forced to admit to the truth of the accounts of his suppressed parentage. order...

The bicentennial observance of the birth of Confederate President Jefferson F. Davis will take place throughout this year, with the highlight being the reopening of Beauvoir, his final home, in Gulfport, Miss., on June 3. The magnificent Southern shrine, which survived a pre-emptive strike by Hurricane Camille in 1969, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The cost of the restoration is expected to exceed $4.1 million for the house alone; the total restoration will run about $20 million, and donations are still being accepted. The reopening ceremonies will feature a keynote address by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. more...

The Sons of Confederate Veterans have declared 2008, the "Year of Jefferson Davis." Remembrance events will include the re-opening of "Beauvoir" on Jefferson Davis' 200th birthday---June 3, 2008. This was Davis' last home that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Museum will be rebuilt and re-open about two years after the house. Beauvoir is located on the beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast. See more at: www.beauvoir.org more...

In the midst of the Civil War centennial in 1962, the South Carolina legislature voted the Confederate flag up to the dome of the Statehouse, adding to a long list of indelicately handled commemorations across the nation highlighting racial divides and old resentments. With about three and a half years until the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, state history buffs are gearing up for the bevy of historic milestones from 2011 to 2015 tied to the bloody four-year conflict. more...

1861: Meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, the Convention of Seceded States adopts a Provisional Constitution forming the Confederate States of America.

In his book, The Origin of the Late War, George Lunt observed, "After the years of 1820-21, during which that great struggle which resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves" ([New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1866], pages 33-34). The violent rhetoric of the Northern Abolitionists, coupled with such events as the August 1831 Southampton Insurrection, in which fifty-seven Whites, most of whom were women and children, were murdered by a group of Blacks led by Nat Turner, a slave preacher, and a free Black, had the effect of provoking the alarm and indignation of Southern slaveholders and quelling the manumission movements. Thus, rather than deserving the laurels of the champions of freedom, "Abolitionists had done more to rivet the chains of the slave and to fasten the curse of slavery upon the country than all the pro-slavery men in the world had done or could do in half a century" (William Henry Smith, A Political History of Slavery [New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903], Volume I, pages 40-41).

Visit This Sponsor

Visit This Sponsor

Visit This Sponsor

Sponsor Dixiepedia For Just 10.00 a Month!