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�Briefing Book on the Inaugural Address
Prepared by
Carter Wilkie
David Kusnet
Little Rock, Arkansas
December 23, 1992
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Briefmg Book on the Inaugural Address
Contents
1.
Separate bound volume of all past Inaugural Addresses.
2.
Half inch VHS videotape of 1981, 1961 and 1933 addresses. (Tapes will
arrive on Thursday. Collier Andress will give to George Stephanopoulos for
delivery to Governor Clinton.)
3.
Background memorandum:
Wilkie analysis of past Inaugural Addresses
4.
Relevant critical essays on past Inaugural Addresses or presidential rhetoric:
Gary Wills on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Dante Germino on the Public Philosophy
Robert Bellah on America's Civil Religion
Kathleen Jamieson on Inaugural Addresses
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on Inaugural Addresses
critical period reviews of past Inaugurations 1885 - 1981
5.
Drafts and suggestions submitted by advisers and friends:
Paul Begala
Alan Barkley, Columbia
·Taylor Branch, author of Parting of the Waters
James MacGregor Bums, American Historian
James Fallows, The Atlantic
Shelby Foote, Civil War historian
Bill Galston, University of Maryland
Stan Greenberg (memorandum en route)
Doris Kearns Goodwin, LBJ and JFK biographer
Barbara Jordan
Gordon Macinnes, author of book on race, friend of Bill Bradley
James MacPherson, Lincoln historian
Richard Neustadt, Harvard University
Andrew Robertson, Louisiana State University
Roy Spence, GSD & M, Austin
William Julius Wilson, University of Chicago
Joint Center for Political Studies, Washington, DC
Michael Waldman (memorandum en route)
Carter Wilkie
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6.
Notable speeches or American documents:
Declaration of Independence, 1776
Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1784
Webster, Bunker Hill memorial, 1825
Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863
Harlan, dissenting opinion, Plessy v. Fergusson, 1896
Walter Lippmann, 1940 reunion of Harvard Class of '10
William Faulkner, 1950 Nobel Prize Address
Eisenhower, 1961 farewell
Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream"
LBJ, Voting Rights Act, March 15, 1965
Jimmy Carter, 1974 Law Day address
Barbara Jordan, 1976 and 1992 conventions
Mario Cuomo, 1983 Inaugural and 1984 convention
Joseph Biden, 1987 campaign
Jesse Jackson, 1988 convention
Theodore White, The American Idea, c. 1990
Bill Bradley, 1991 and 1992 speeches on race
AI Gore Jr., 1992 Fort Collins, CO
7.
Speeches by Governor Clinton:
Inaugural addresses as Governor (copies arrive from archives January 4)
announcement
"New Covenant" series (3) given at Georgetown
DLC, New Orleans, 1992
nomination acceptance speech
National Bar Association, St Louis
Notre Dame
Foreign policy and the Democratic Ideal
election night
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MEMORANDUM
TO:
FR:
RE:
DT:
George Stephanopoulos
Carter Wtlkie
lessons from a reading of inaugural addresses
December 18, 1992
The Inaugural Address enables the President to:
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interpret the election in terms of the mood of the country and the mandate
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from the electorate;
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present the President's political ideology in its most basic and fundamental
form;
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present the broad mission of the next Presidency;
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define the purpose of America and recreate the national character;
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unify the country under the President's leadership.
Composition.
Inaugural addresses combine two forms of rhetoric: demonstrative (ceremonial purpose,
collective themes) and deliberative (what is to be done). The enduring inaugural addresses
are those where the demonstrative rhetoric flows naturally from the deliberative rhetoric
throughout the speech (i.e., Lincolri, 1865; Wilson, 1913; Kennedy, 1961) .. ·The less notable
speeches often combine these two types of rhetoric as separate sections with an unnatural
break somewhere in the middle. Two widely admired speeches of this form, however, are
Jefferson, 1801, and FDR, 1933- Jefferson's for the clarity of philosophy and· Roosevelt's
for the clarity of action in the shadows of economic crisis and Hoover's passive presidency.
Taft, 1909, is a good example of a solely deliberative (and ineffective) address. Harrison,
1841, is an example of what happens when demonstrative rhetoric is carried too far.
•
There is no set format for the inaugural address, only precedent. A chronological reading of
the addresses shows how much some presidents have relied on the addresses of their
predecessors as models. Lincoln may have been the first to break with the rigid formality of
early American ceremonial language, but his first inaugural is still a product of an early age
when the President spoke about his personal duties in the first person voice to an audience in
his immediate presence. Later inaugural addresses, given after the rise of mass
communications, show a greater awareness of the national, and international audience .
The address of the obscure and short lived President James Garfield is the earliest address
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that is closest to the 20th century style: the President speaking mainly in the collective voice
and memory of the nation (much as Lincoln did at. Gettysburg), including a broad but brief
outline of the principles guiding his agenda, summarized· with a humble request for God's
blessing. The President as voice of the nation emerged from several factors: the idea of the
nation and the presidency itself had reached new importance after the Civil War and
Reconstruction, the celebration of America's centennial made Americans more aware of the
depth of their national experience, history was beginning to replace religion as a means of
socialization, and communications technology in the industrial age allowed rhetoric to
persuade a broader audience than ever before. In 1961, Kennedy goes so far as to direct
most of his address to the world: "To those old allies... To those new states... To those
peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe... To our sister republics ... To that world
assembly of sovereign states... Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our
adversaries... Let both sides... Let both sides... Let both sides... "
Approach to subject matter.
•
While modem inaugural addresses have attempted to shape the times, the times more
certainly shape the inaugural address. Kennedy, 1961, continues a mission for the Cold War
era. FOR, 1933, reflects the economic crisis. Lincoln, 186.1, deals with secession. Reagart,
1981, and Harding, 1921, reflect the mood of a nation exhausted by socially disruptive
activism .
The most enduring inaugural addresses offer a broad, deep, and enduring vision of the
purpose of America and the purpose of the incoming presidency. The most dramatic ones
follow a turnover of party in control of the White House. These addresses clearly advance a
different philosophy and a new presidential mission, i.e., Reagan on limited government
(1981), FDR on activist government (1933), Wilson on progressive government (1913),
Lincoln on preserving Constitutional government (1861).
Unsuccessful presidencies, in this century at least, have been preceded by an inaugural
address that reflects the new President's uncertainty about the broad mission of his
administration and the direction of the country under his leadership. These addresses most
often occur before transitional administrations between eras of passive and active presidencies
(i.e., Hoover).
Ideology provides a mission in effective, enduring inaugural addresses. Ideology is often
advanced by distancing the incoming President from the inadequate methods of rejected,
earlier administrations, especially after a partisan victory:
•
Reagan, 1981: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to the
problem ... We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for
a special interest group that has been too long neglected ... In the days ahead, I
will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and
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reduced productivity. •
FDR, 1933: "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in
the court of public opinion, rejected by the. hearts and minds of men ... They
know only the rules of a generation of sclf-seekers. They have no vision, and
where there is no vision the people perish. •
Wilson, 1913: "The great government we loved has too often been made use
of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the
people. •
Cleveland, 1893: "These aggregations and combinations frequently constitute
conspiracies against the interests of the people, and in all their phases they are
unnatural and opposed to our American sense of fairness ... Our mission is not
punishment, but the rectification of wrong."
·Jackson, 1829: "... the task of reform, which will require particularly the
correction of those abuses that have brought the patronage of the federal
government into conflict with the freedom of elections . . . and have. placed or
continued power in unfaithful or incompetent hands.".
•
By contrast, when an incoming President is conscious of a narrow victory, the inaugural
address strikes a more conciliatory tone:
Nixon, 1969: "... government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways
- to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the
voices of the heart - to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that
have despaired of being heard. To those who have been left out, we will try
to bring in. n
Lincoln, 1861: "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it
must not break our bonds of affection."
Jefferson, 1801: "... every difference of opinion is not a difference of
principle... We are all republicans, we are all federalists " [Dumas Malone claims
Jefferson did not capitalize the political terms and did not intend to use them as party labels]
Each new·president strives for near unanimity in the nation's ideals, and this is achieved in
several ways. The most common employed being a de-emphasis of partisan victory.
•
American presidents have always made an effort to de-politicize or heal traumatic, divisive,
national experiences (i.e., Bush on Vietnam, Carter on Watergate, Nixon on public protest,
Garfield on racial equality, Hayes on Reconstruction, Lincoln on the Civil War, Buchanan on
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slavery in the territories, Polk on sectional rivalry, Jefferson on the bitter election dispute of
1800). The choice of a new President after all is • choice for renewal.
On the other hand, Americans also have a stubborn preference for the security of the
familiar. There is a constant conflict throughout American history between progress and
preservation, between change and continuity. New Presidents with new philosophies bndge
this divide by attaching their new mission to enduring ideas. Since the founding, they have
grafted their vision onto an existing tradition or they have created new ones to serve their
purposes. As custodians of the national memory, they self-consciously present change as
continuity and progress as preservation. FDR was a master at masking sweeping reforms
with an appeal to early American ideals. Jackson saw himself as the heir to Washington leading an oppressed people to new political power. Lincoln was the first President to
resurrect Jefferson's democratic vision on behalf of equality and •government of the people,
by the people, for the people" (see Gary Wills on Lincoln's Gettysburg address). Wilson, and other ·.
reformers, have described their work as •restoration." And Reagan appropriated Jefferson's
anti-federalism and FDR's common touch in pursuit of Coolidge's passive presidency. The.
more effective addresses recall the ideas without forcing the new President to compete with
past heroic Presidents by name.
The new President unifies the nation as the arbiter of America's national purpose, what
Walter Lippmann called the public philosophy, and what others call the American idea.
From several sources (see in particular Dante Germ.ino•s essay. "The Inaugural Addresses of American
Presidents. Public Philosophy and Rhetoric") the following interpretations of America's purpose have
dominated political thought (and therefore inaugural addresses) at certain eras in our history.
These ideas have not always been universally accepted, however, and they have often been
met with limiting movements of reaction:
Place in world
r1S1 New Order for the Ages
19h5 Protected sanctuary
l0'l7 Savior
~ 11<1 z. Interdependence
Government
1161 Theocratic Republic
1030 Union
1~C c Activism
Conce,pt of justice
1191 Liberty
I 0h.3 Equality
11'5 Opportunity
Just as there is an attachment to American myths, successful inaugural addresses have
effectively defined problems to be tackled as mythic enemies to be conquered by American
exceptionalism. IFK, FDR and Lincoln announce their challenges (Communism, depression
and secession) with arresting imagery and religious iconography. By doing so, each
demonstrates strength, bravery, and inspires confidence. They stop short of promising
absolute victory, but they reassure America with the promise of a courageous effort in a
great cause.
•
Ineffective inaugural addresses, on the other hand, present the presidency and the will of the
people as weak or small in the shadow of the great problems of the day. Hoover, for
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instance, offers a dispirited and clinical examination of the side effects of prohibition .
(Lincoln's speech after the secession of Southern states sounds more confident and optimistic
than Hoover's made during the prosperity of the 1920s.)· Some modem Presidents have
spoken of a national spiritual erosion so great as tc.> further doubt, despair and deeper angst in
the national character.
The effective addresses place problems as aberrations outside the American mainstream, as
problems arising because our leaders did not adhere to lasting American principles (i.e.,
economic inequity arises from a deviance from egalitarianism, government grows too large
because of a deviance from anti-federalism). In other words, our problems are problems
because they are un-American. After FDR rebuked Hoover's stewardship of America's
economy, the Atlanta Constitution wrote, "... the address is a straight-from-the-shoulder
attack on the evils responsible for the present condition of the country - evils which have
grown up as the result of the misplaced confidence in those the public had a right to think it·
could trust. n
The ineffective speeches, however' blame deep problems on fundamental . .
flaws in the American system or character. This conflicts with American exceptionalism .
and the need to unify the nation under positive ideals. Failures are best presented as not
failures of the system but as failures of previous leaders to adhere to our lasting principles
(democracy, egalitarianism, justice, etc.).
•
Few modem addresses have provided a specific policy outline for the new administration.
The few that have, do so in a general, rather than detailed, manner. Despite FDR's specific
calls for a special session of Congress to enact banking reform and the equivalent of war
powers to attack the economic crisis, some members of Congress expressed mild criticism
for his lack of more definite proposals. Almost all news accounts of inaugural addresses
footnote how they commonly lack detailed policies, and the news of FDR's inauguration
focused on the immediate and dramatic sense of action on the economic crisis. Truman's
inaugural address sixteen years later was more policy specific. (Most inaugural addresses of
sitting Presidents tend to be more policy specific; a sitting President has less need for
demonstrative rhetoric to herald the status quo.) Truman's theme was foreign policy. And
news of his address concerned the first hints of what would become his Point Four Program.
The fourth foreign policy point of his address spoke of a new concern. for "underdeveloped"
countries.
There does not appear to be a correlation, however, between policies enacted early in an
administration and policies outlined in an inaugural address. Wilson, for instance, won great
economic reforms in a special session of Congress soon after he delivered what some
admirers at the time called a moral sermon on America. The most policy specific address of
the century, Taft, 1909, is criticized as themeless, uninspiring and lacking in the profound
vision necessary in a successful President. Taft became a one term failure.
Several strong Presidents have unified the strength of their leadership with a dramatic call to
action, a call for citizens to join them in a united cause. (i.e., Kennedy, 1961: "... ask not
what your country can do for you-- ask what you can do for your country.") FDR's
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inaugural message - "Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics 'alone. This
nation asks for action, and action now. • -.was followed by an editorial in the New York
Times entitled "A SUMMONS TO ACTION": "If in the Inaugural Address of President
Roosevelt anything is lacking, it is not courage.. Ill the boldest and most resolute way he
called upon the nation to join him in taking arms against a sea of troubles. • The most
applauded section of Wilson's first address was a summons to the American people to form a
partnership with the new President: "This is not a day of triumph. It is a day of dedication. ·
Here muster not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us.
Men's lives hang in the balance. Men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who
shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all
patriotic, all forward looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, If they
will but counsel and sustain me. •
Blessing.
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Most Presidents customarily conclude with a humble request for God's blessing and make
some reference to what writer Robert Bellah calls America's Civil Religion. Bellah notes
how not one President fails to include a reference to God, but the God they do mention is not
necessarily Christian: "The God of the civil religion is not only rather 'unitarian,' he is alsri
on the austere side, much more related to order, law, and right than to salvation and love...
He is actively interested and involved in history, with a special concern for America. Here
the analogy has much less to do with natural law than with ancient Israel.... God has led his
people to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto the nations."
Washington, Bellah notes, defined America's civil religion as Moses leading America from a
mythical Egypt. Poet Robert Lowell has noted Lincoln's Christian images at Gettysburg, but
Bellah notes how Lincoln's inaugurals speak more of reconciliation than redemption. The
role of religion in inaugural addresses is more perfuntory in the modem deliveries, but
Wilson, 1913, and Carter, 1977, set a deeply personal moral tone, and Kennedy, 1961, and
Bush, 1989, openly promote a civic morality that includes sacrifice and selflessness. ·At their
ceremonies, Presidents Jackson, Wilson, and Truman each bent to kiss the Bible. All three
of them came from a regional culture with roots in backcountry Presbyterianism, a culture
critically shaped by reverance for Scripture. Eisenhower began his 1953 inaugural address
with a prayer.
Optional salutations.
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At the first inauguration, Washington spoke before a joint session of Congress and therefore
saluted the members before beginning his address. Most Presidents thereafter addressed an
assembled crowd as "Fellow Citizens". In 1861, Lincoln, speaking two weeks after the
inauguration of Jefferson Davis, pointedly began, "Fellow Citizens of the United States".
Wilson began his inaugural address without a salutation, choosing instead a dramatic opening
sentence, "There has been a change in government." It is not until FDR in 1933 that
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documentation exists of a President recognizing luminaries on stage. That year,. Roosevelt
began: •President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, My Friends•. Most (but not every one) of the
Presidents since have followed Roosevelt's precedent. Kennedy, Reagan and Bush ail
prefaced their speeches by recognizing a lengthy Ust of political dignitaries by name. Jimmy
Carter began by thanking •my predecessor• - a practice that Reagan and Bush followed later
without Carter's original effect.. A strong case can be made for returning to the .earlier,
simpler salutation •Fellow Citizens. • It is certainly the most· democratic. And it .
immediately connects the new President with all citizens. The lengthy lists of luminaries, on
the other hand, immediately places the President among a privileged class of government
insiders whose business, it could appear, has priority over the business of all Americans
outside the corridors of power. The recognition of luminaries further places political power
behind personalities rather than behind ideas. (Is. it just a coincidence that the .first evidence
of this custom arises in the 20th century's age of fascism?)
Length
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The two inaugural addresses most praised for stylistic reasons are btief. Linooln's second is
698 words long and Kennedy's is 1,355. Prior to Kennedy, the 40 year average length was
2,500 words, and the freshness in Kennedy's brevity was widely noted after his delivery.
FDR's 1945 address, a clear and thoughtful speech, was 559 words, the second shortest after
Washington's second inaugural of 135 words ..
The longest inaugural address (8,495 words) was delivered by 68 year old William Henry
Harrison. The address, given in a snowstorm, lasted an hour and forty five minutes, but
Harrison lasted only one month after his inauguration. As one commentator has said, the
rule should be "Give me brevity or give me death."
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Frequent critic81
comments
on inaugural
address
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Effective
Ineffective
articulate the nation's ideals
great expectations
strong senSe of directio~
clear ideology, fundamental views
genuine aspirations
mythic imagery and iconography
lasting American principles
American exceptionaiism
duty and sacrifice
real understanding of challenges
tell them where you stand
identity abuses of American ideals
the moment and spirit of the times
sweeping principles
broad mission and purpose
idealistic
promote change as continuity
failure to interpret the purpose of America ·
resignation to disappointment
.
no guidance to a nation in need of reassurance
apologetic or too conciliatory for the sake of unity
posturing
overdose or superficial use of symbolism
historic commentary without persuasive purpose
glib affirmations
no call to action
false promises
leave them guessing
blame problems on flaws in the American character
too rooted in the present as to prevent timelessness
programmatic policy
no mission or too specific an agenda
messianic or overly moralistic
a mission without roots in a deeply American idea
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Frequent comments on inaugural address
style
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Effective
Ineffective
brevity is clear and lasting
thematic unity
imperial and solemn
eloquent simplicity
uplifting
coherent
original thought
original expression
sense of command
confidence
certainty
possessive pronouns "ours ... we"
nation& references
national experiences
action language ("rebom ... robust")
optimism
direct
emotion
heal, encourage and console
variety within a theme
grace, poetic or lyrical cadences
present moment (now)
captivating imagery
inclusion ("Americans, citizens")
urgency, momentum, boldness
dramatic opening line
length makes. ideas less dramatic and memorable
~t or scattered
pedestrian or· informal
simpliStic
uninspiring
muddled
cliches or slogans
appropriation of previous inaugural styles or messages ·
weakness
doubt
qualifiers ("if.• ~almost•.. might")
personal pronouns "I... you"
self-references
personal experiences for false intimacy of television
abstract language ("spiritual ... honorably ... beauty")
pessimism
too plain or too colloquial
too stoic or clinical
partisan
repetition
rhythm for the sake of memorable, quotable sound bites
present place (here)
purple prose
separatism ("men and women, North and South")
timidity
rhetorical formalities
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�In an act of "open-air s/eig/11 ofluznd," Lincoln cnated a nnJP Consti17Jtion, revolutionized
,
tile Revolution, andgOf.Je u.i a Col!ntry dlanged forever
·.
THE WORDS
·'THAT
REMADE AMERICA·
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Lincoln at Gettysburg
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BY GARRY WILLS
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N THE
~ERMATH
OF THE BATTLE OF GETn'SBURG,
both sides, leaving fifty thousand dead or wounded
or missing behind them, had reason to maintain a
large pattern of pretense-Lee pretending that he
was not taking back to the South a broken cause, Meade
that he would not let the broken pieces fall through his
fingers. It would have been hard to predict that Gettysburg, out of all this muddle, these missed chances, all the
senseless deaths, would become a symbol of national purpose, pride, and ideals. Abraham Lincoln transformed the
ugly reality into something rich and strange-and he did
it with Z72 words. The power of words has rarely been
given a more compelling demonstration.
The residents of Gettysburg had little reason to be satisfied with the war machine that had churned up their
lives. General George Gordon Meade may have pursued
General Robert E. Lee in slow motion, but he wired
headquarters that "I cannot delay to pick up the debris of
the battlefield." That debris was mainly a matter of rotting horseflesh and manflesh--thousands of fermenting
bodies, with gas-distended bellies, deliquescing in the
July heat. For hygienic reasons, the five thouSand horses
and mules had to be consumed by fire, trading the smell
of decaying flesh for that of burning flesh. Human bodies
were scattered over, or (barely) under, the ground. Suffocating teams of Union soldiers, Confederate prisoners,
and dragooned civilians slid the bOdies beneath a minimal covering as fast as possible-crudely posting the
names of the Union dead with sketchy information on
boards, not stopping to figure out what units the Confederate bodies had belonged to. It was work to be done
bugger-mugger or not at all, fighting clustered bluebottle
flies black on the earth, shoveling and retching by rums.
The whole area of Geaysburg-a town of only twentyfive hundred inhabitants-was one makeshift burial
ground, fetid and steaming. Andrew Curtin, the Republican governor of Pennsylvania. was facing a difficult reelection campaign. He must placate local feelfng, deal
JUNE 199Z
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with other states diplomatically, and raise the funds to
cope with corpses that could go on killing by means of
fouled sueams or contaminating exhumations.
Curtin made the thirty-two-year-old David Wills, a
Gettysburg lawyer, his agent on the scene. Wills (who is
no relation to the author) had studied law with Gettysburg's most prominent former citizen, Thaddeus
· Stevens, the radical Republican now representing Lancaster in Congress. Wills was a civic leader, and he owned
the largest house on the town square. He put an end to
land speculation for the burial ground and formed an interstate commission to collect funds for the cleansing of
Gettysburg's bloodied fields. The states were to be assessed according to their representation in Congress. To
charge them by the actual number of each state's dead
would have been a time-consuming and complicated
process, waiting on identification of each corpse, on the
division of costs for those who could not be identified,
and on the fixing of per-body rates for exhumation, identification, and reinterment.
Wills put up for bids the contract to rebury the bodies;
out of thirty-four bids. the high one was eight dollars per
corpse and the winning one was $1.59. The federal government was asked to ship in the thousands of caskets
needed, courtesy of the War Department. All other costs
were handled by the interstate commission. Wills took tide to seventeen ·acres for the new cemetery in the name
of Pennsylvania.
Wills meant to dedicate the ground that would hold
the corpses even before they were moved. He felt the
need for artful words to sweeten the poisoned air of Gettysburg. He asked the principal wordsmiths of his time
to join this effort-Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant. All
three poets, each for his own reason, found their muse
unbiddable. But Wills was not terribly disappointed. The
normal purgative for such occasions was a large-scale,
solemn act of oratory, a kind of performance art that had
great power over audiences iri the. middle of the nine-
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teenth century. Some later accouius would emphasize
the length of the main speech at the Gettysburg dcdicadon. as if that were an ordeal or an imposition on· the au- ·
.• dience. But a talk of several hours was customary and expected then-much like the length and pacing of a
..
modem rock concert. The crowds that heard Lincoln de,··,
bate; Stephen DOuglas in 1858, through three-hour en. • ,,.v'flagements, were delighted to hear Daniel Webster and
·other orators of the day recite carefully comP.osed para·
graphs fol two hours at the least.
The champion at such declamatory occasions, after the
death of Daniel Webster, was Webster's friend Edward
Everett. Everett was that rare thing, a scholar and an Ivy
League diplomat who could hold mass audiences in thrall.
His voice, diction, and gestures were successfully dramatic, and he habitually performed his well-crafted text, no
matter how long, from memory. Everett was the inevitable choice for Wills, the indispensable component in
the scheme for the cemetery's consecration. Battlefields
were something of a specialty with Everett-he had augmented the fame of Lexington and Concord and Bunker
Hill by his oratory at those Revolutionary sites. Simply to
have him speak at Gettysburg would add this field to the
sacred roll of names from the Founders' battles.
Everett was invited, on September 23. to appear October 23. That would leave all of November for filling the
graves. But a month was not sufficient time for Everett to
make his customary preparation for a major speech. He
did careful research on the battles he was commemorating-a task made difficult in this case by the fact that official accounts of the engagement were just appearing.
Everett would have to make his own inquiries. He could
not be ready before November 19. Wills seized on that
earliest moment, though it broke with the reburial schedule that had been laid out to foUow on the October dedication. He decided to move up the reburial, beginning it
in October and hoping to finish by November 19.
The careful negotiations with Everett form a conuast,
more surprising to us than to contemporaries, with the casual invitation to President Lincoln, issued some time later as part of a general call for the federal Cabinet and other celebrities to join in what was essentially a ceremony of
the participating states.
No insult was intended. Federal responsibility for or
participation in state activities was not assumed then.
And Lincoln took no offense. Though specifically invited
to deliver only "a few appropriate remarks" to open the
cemetery, he meant to use this opportunity. The partly
mythical victory of Gettysburg was an element of his Administration's war propaganda. (There were, even then,
few enough victories to boast of.) Beyond that, he was
working to unite the rival Republican factions of Governor Curtin and Simon Cameron, Edwin Stanton's predecessor as Secretary ofWar. He knew that most of the state
governors would be attending or sending important aides
-his own bodyguard, Ward Lamon, who was-acting as
\1 o-.; T H I. Y
chief marshal organizing the affair, would have alened
him to the scale the event had assumed, with a uemendous crowd expected. This was a classic situation for political fence-mending and intelligence-gathering. Lincoln
would take with him aides who would circulate and bring
back their findings. Lamon himself had a cluster of
friends in Pennsylvania politics, including some close to
Curtin. who had been infuriated when Lincoln overrode
his opposition to Cameron's Cabinet appointment.
Lincoln also knew the power of his rhetoric to define
war aims. He was seeking occasions to use his words outside the normal round of proclamations and reports to
Congress. His determination not only to be present but to
speak is seen in the way he overrode staff scheduling for
the trip to Gettysburg. Stanton had arranged for a 6:00
A.M. train to take him the hundred and twenty rail miles
to the noontime affair. But Lincoln was familiar enough
by now with military movement to appreciate what
Clausewitz called "friction" in the disposal of.forces-dle
margin for error that must always be built into planning.
Lamon would have informed Lincoln about the potential
for muddle on the nineteenth. State delegations, civic organizations, military bands and units, were planning to
come by train and road, bringing at least ten thousand
people to a town with poor resources for feeding and
sheltering crowds (especially if the weather turned bad).
So Lincoln countermanded Stanton's plan:
I do not like this arrangement. I do not wish to so go
that by the slightest accident we fail entirely, and, at
the best. the whole to be a mere breathless running of
the gauntlet....
If Lincoln had not changed the schedule, he would very
likely not have given his talk. Even on the day before, his
trip to Gettysburg took six hours, with transfers in Baltimore and at Hanover Junction. Governor Curtin, starting
from Harrisburg (thirty miles away) with six other governors as his guests, was embarrassed by breakdowns and
delays that made them miss dinner at David Wills's
house. They had gathered at 2:00 P.M., started at five, and
arrived at eleven. Senator Alexander Ramsey, of Minnesota, was stranded, at 4:00A.M. on the day of delivery,
in Hanover Junction, with "no means of getting up to
Gettysburg." Lincoln kept his resolution to leave a day
early even when he realized that his wife was hysterical
over one son's illness soon after the death of another son.
The President had important business in Gettysburg.
When Lightning Struck
F
OR A MAN SO DETERMINED TO GET THERE, LIN-
coln seems-in familiar accounts-to have been
rather cavalier about preparing what he would
say in Gettysburg. The silly but persistent myth
is that he jotted his brief remarks on the back of an envelope. (Many details of the day are in fact still disputed,
58
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and no definitive account exists.) Better-attested reports
have him considering them on the way to a photographer's shop in Washington, writing them on a piece of cardboard as the train took him on the hundred-and-twentymile trip, penciling them in David Wills's house on the
night before the dedication, writing them in that house
on the morning of the day he had to deliver them, and
even composing them in his head as Everett spoke, before Lincoln rose to follow him.
These recollections, recorded at various times after the
JUNE 199Z
speech had been given and won fame, reflect two concerns on the part of those speaking them. They r~veal an
understandable pride in participation at the historic occasion. It was not enough for those who treasured their day
at Gettysburg to have heard Lincoln speak-a privilege
they shared with ten to twenty thousand other people,
and an experience that lasted no more than three minutes. They wanted to be intimate with the gestation of
that extraordinary speech, watching the pen or pencil
move under the inspiration of the moment.
IUUSTRATION BY GARY KELLEY
59
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That 'h the other emphasis in these accounts-that it
f/Jas a product of the moment. struck off as Lincoln
moved under destiny's guidance. Inspiration was shed on
him in the presence of others. The contrast with
Everett's long labors of preparation is always implied. Research, learning, the student's lamp-none of these were
needed by Lincoln, whose unsummoned muse was
prompting him, a democratic muse unacquainted with
the library. Lighming suuck, and each of our informants
(or their sources) was there when it struck.
The trouble with these accounts is that the lightning
strikes too often, as if it could not get the work done on
its first attempt. It hits Lincoln on the train, in his room,
at night. in the morning. If inspiration was treating him
this way, he should have been short-circuited, not inspired, by the time he spoke.
These mythical accounts are badly out of character for
Lincoln, who composed his speeches thoughtfully. His
law partner, William Herndon, having observed Lincoln's
careful preparation of cases, recorded that he was a slow
writer, who liked to sort out his points and tighten his logic and his phrasing. That is the process vouched for in
every other case of Lincoln's memorable public statements. It is impossible to imagine him leaving his Gettysburg speech to the last moment. He knew he would
be busy on the train and at the site-important political
guests were with him from his departure, and more
joined him at Baltimore, full of talk about the war, elections, and policy. In Gettysburg he would be entertained
at David Wills's house, with Everett and other important
guests. State delegations would want a word with him.
He hoped for a quick tour of the battle site (a hope fulfilled early on the nineteenth). He could not count on any
time for the concentration he required when weighing his
words.
In f~ct. at least two people testified that the speech was
mainly composed in Washington, before Lincoln left for
Gettysburg-though these reports, like all later ones describing this speech's composition, are themselves suspect. Lamon claimed that a day or two before the dedication Lincoln read him substantially the text that was
delivered. But Lamon's remarks are notoriously imaginative, and he was busy in Gettysburg from November 13
to 16. He made a swift trip back to Washington on the
sixteenth to collect his marshals and instruct them before
departing again the next morning. His testimony here, as
·elsewhere, daes not have much weight.·· ·
6Z
Noah Brooks, Lincoln's journalist friend, claimed that
he talked with Lincoln on November 15, when Lincoln
told him he had written his speech "over, two or three
times"-but Brooks also said that Lincoln had with him
galleys of Everett's speech, which had been set in type
for later printing by the Boston Journal. In fact the
Everett speech was not set until November 14, and then·
by the Boston Daily Atloirtiser. It is unlikely.that a c_opy
could have reached Lincoln so early.
·
"Remarks"
L
INCOLN"S TRAIN ARRIVED TOWARD DUSK IN GET·
tysburg. There were still coffins stacked at the
station for completing the reburials. Lamon,
Wills, and Everett met Lincoln and escorted
him the two blocks to the Wills home, where dinner was
waiting, along with almost two dozen other distinguished
guests. Lincoln's black servant, William Slade, took his
luggage to the second-story room where he would stay
that night. which looked out on the square.
Everett was already in residence at the Wills house,
and Governor Curtin's late arrival led Wills to suggest
that the two men share a bed. The governor thought he
could find another house to receive him, though lodgings
were so overcrowded that Everett said in his diary that
"the fear of having the Executive of Pennsylvania tumbled in upon me kept me awake until one." Everett's
daughter was sleeping with two other women, and the
bed broke under their weight. William Saunders, the
cemetery's designer, who would have an honored place
on the platform the next day, could find no bed and had
to sleep sitting up in a crowded parlor.
It is likely that Everett, who had the galleys of his
speech with him, showed them to Lincoln that night.
Noah Brooks,- who· mistook the timt·when Everett .
showed Lincoln his speech, probably gave the right reason-so that Lincoln would not be embarrassed by any
inadvertent correspondences or unintended differences.
Lincoln greeted Curtin after his late arrival, and was
otherwise interrupted during the night. Bands and serenades were going through the crowded square under his
window. One group asked him to speak, and the newspa·
per reported his words:
I appear before you, fellow-citizens, merely to thank
you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair
JUNE 199Z
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one that you would hear me for a little while at least,
were I to commence to make a speech. I do not ap~r
, before you for the purpose of doing so. and for several .
substantial· reasons. The most substantial of these is
that I have no speech to make. [Laughter.] In my position it is somewhat important that I should not say any
· foolish things. [A voice: If you can help it.] It very often
. · .: h,appens that the only way to help it is to say nothing at
aiL [Laughter.] Believing that is my present condition ·
~~ this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from addressin~ you further.
' -•t'F._.
This displays Lincoln's normal reluctance to improvise
words as President. Lincoln's secretary John Hay, watching the scene from the crowd, noted in his diary: ·"The
President appeared at the door and said half a dozen
words meaning nothing & went in."
Early in the morning Lincoln took a carriage ride to the
battle sites. Later, Ward Lamon and his specially uniformed marshals assigned horses to the various dignitaries
(carriages would have clogged the site too much). Although the march was less than a mile, Lamon had
brought thirty horses into town, and Wills had supplied a
hundred, to honor the officials present.
Lincoln sat his horse gracefully (to the surprise of
some), and looked meditative during the long wait while
marshals tried to coax into line important people more
concerned about their dignity than the President was
about his. Lincoln was wearing a mourning band on his
hat for his dead son. He also wore white gauntlets, which
made his large hands on the reins dramatic by contrast
with his otherwise black attire.
Everett had gone out earlier, by carriage, to prepare
himself in the special tent he had asked for near the platform. At sixty-nine, he had kidney trouble and needed to
relieve himself just before and after the Eflree-hour cere~
mony. (He had put his problem so delicately that his
hosts did not realize that he meant to be left alone in the
tent; but he finally coaxed them out.) Everett mounted
the platform at the last moment, after most of the others .
had arrived.
Those on the raised platform were hemmed in close by
standing crowds. When it had become clear that the numbers might approach twenty thousand,. the platform had
been set at some distance from the burial operations.
Only a third of the expected bodies had been buried, and
those under fresh mounds. Other graves had been readied for the bodies, which arrived in irregular order (some
from this state, some from that), making it impossible to
complete one section at a time. The whole burial site was
incomplete. Marshals tried to keep the milling thousands
out of the work in progress.-Everett, as usual, had neatly placed his thick text on a
little table before him-and then ostentatiously refused
to look at it. He was able to indicate with gestures the
sites of the battle's progress, visible from where he stood.
He excoriated the rebels for their atrocities, implicitly
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justifying the fact that some Confederate skeletons were
still unburied, lying in the clefts of Devil's Den under
rocks and autumn leaves. Two days earlier Everett had
been shown around the field, and places were pointed out
where the bodies lay. His speech, for good or ill, would
pick its way through the carnage.
As a former Secretary of State, Everett had many
sources, in and outside government, for the informatioQ
he had gathered so diligently. Lincoln no doubt watched
closely how the audience responded to passages that absolved Meade of blame for letting Lee escape. The setting of the battle in a larger logic of campaigns had an immediacy for those on the scene which we cannot recover.
Everett's familiarity with the details was flattering to the
local audience, which nonetheless had things to learn
from this shapely presentation of the whole three days'
action. This was like a modem "docudrama" ·on television, telling the story of recent events on the basis of investigative reporting. We badly misread the evidence if
we think Everett failed to work his customary magic. The
best witnesses on the scene-Lincoln's personal secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, with their professional interest in good prose and good theater-praised
Everett at the time and ever after. He received more attention in their biography's chapter on Gettysburg than
did their own boss.
When Lincoln rose, it was with a sheet or two, from
which he read. Lincoln's three minutes would ever after
be obsessively contrasted with Everett's two hours in accounts of this day. It is even claimed that Lincoln disconcerted the crowd with his abrupt performance, so that
people did not know how to respond ("Was that a/1?").
Myth tells of a poor photographer making leisurely
arrangements to take Lincoln's picture, expecting him to
be standing for some time. But it is useful to look at the
relevant part of the program:
Music. by Birgfield's Band.
Prayer. by Rev. T.H. Stockton, D.D.
Music. by tlze Marint Band.
ORATION. by Hon. Edward Evm11.
Music. Hymn composed by B. B. Frmc/1.
DEDICATORY REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES.
Dirge. sung by Cltoir sekckdfor tlze occasion.
Benediction. by Rev. H.L. Bauglur, D.D.
There was only one "oration" announced or desired here.
Though we call Lincoln's text lite Gettysburg Address,
that title clearly belongs to Everett. Lincoln's contribution, labeled "remarks," was intended to make the dedication formal (somewhat like ribbon-cutting at modern
openings). Lincoln was not expected to speak at length,
any more than Rev. T. H. Stockton was (though Stockton's prayer is four times the length of the President's remarks). A contrast of length with Everett's talk raises a
false issue. Lincoln's text is startlingly brief for what it acJUNE 199Z
64
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complished, but that would be equally true if Everett had
spoken for a shorter time or had not spoken at all.
Nonetheless, the contrast was strong. Everett's voice
was sweet and expertly modulated; Lincoln's was high co
the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended
some eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advan·
cage from his high tenor voice-carrying power. If there is
agreement on any one aspect of Lincoln's delivery, at
Gettysburg or elsewhere, it is on his audibility. Modern
impersonators of Lincoln, such as Walter Huston, RayJUNE 199Z
mond Massey, Henry Fonda, and the various actors who
give voice to Disneyland animations. of the President,
bring him before us as a baritone, which is considered a
more manly or heroic voice-though both the Roosevelt
Presidents of our century were tenors. What should not
be forgotten is chat Lincoln was himself an actor, an expert raconteur and mimic, and one who spent hours reading speeches out of Shakespeare to any willing (or sometimes unwilling) audience. He knew a good deal about
rhythmic delivery and meaningful inflection. John Hay,
IUUSTRATION BY BRU ASSOCIATES
65
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who had submitted to many of thase Shakespeare readings. gave high marks to his boss's performance at Gc.teysburg. He put in his diary at the time that "the Prcsi-.
dent. in a fine, free way, with more grace than is his wont,
' said his half dozen words of consecration." Lincoln's text
,.
was polished, his delivery emphatic; he was interrupted
i , 1\)y applause five times. Read in a slow, clear way to the
• ~ardlest listeners, the speech would take about three min• 'Utes. It is quite uuc the audience did not take in all that
happen~ in that shon rime-we arc still trying to weigh
the consequences of Lincoln's amazing performance. But
the myth that Lincoln was disappointed in the resultthat he told the unreliable Lamon that his speech, like a
bad plow, "won't scour"-has no basis. He had done
what he wanted to do, and Hay shared the pride his superior took in an important occasion put to good use.
...
i.
A Giant, if Benign, Swindle
.N
THE LEAST, LINCOLN HAD FAR SURPASSED
•
graves. missratc the ca~ for which they died. and libel
the statesmen who founded the government? They
were men possessing too much sclf-·rcspcct to declare
that negroes were their equals. or were entided to equal
privileges.
Heirs to this ouuage still attack Lincoln for subverting
the Constitution at Gettysburg-suicidally frank conservatives like M. E. Bradford and the late Willmoore
Kendall. But most conservatives are understandably unwilling to challenge a statement now so hallowed, so literally sacrosanct. as Lincoln's clever assault on the constitutional past. They would rather hope or pretend. with
some literary critics, that Lincoln's emotionally moving
address had no discernible intellectual content. that, in
the words of the literary critic James Hurt, "the sequence
of ideas is commonplace .!0 the point of banality, the ordinary coin of funereal oratory."
·
People like Kendall' and the Chicago ·Timts cdi.tors
might have wished this were uuc, but they knew better.
They recognized the audacity of Lincoln's undertaking.
Kendall rightly says that Lincoln undenook a new founding of the nation, to correct things felt to be imperfect in
the Founders' own achievement:
David Wills's hope for words to disinfect the air
of Gettysburg. His speech hovers far above the
carnage. He lifts the battle to a level of abstraction that purges it of grosser matter-even "eanh" is
Abraham Lincoln and, in considerable degree, the aumentioned only as the thing from which the tested form
thors of the post-civil-war amendments, attempted a
of government shall not perish. The nightmare rel!-lities
new act of founding, involving concretely a startling
have been etherealized in the crucible of his language.
new interpretation of that principle of the founders
Lincoln was here to clear the infected atmosphere of
which declares that "All men are created equal."
American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the Constitution-not as
Edwin Meese and other "original intent" conservatives
William Lloyd Garrison had, by burning an instrument
also want to go back before the Civil War amendments
that countenanced slavery. He altered the document . (panicularly the Fourteenth) to the original Founders.
from within, by appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly
Their job would be comparatively easy if they did not
changing the recalcitrant stuff of that legal compromise,
have to work against the values created by the Gettysbringing it to its own indictment. By implicitly doing this,
burg Address. Its deceptively simple-sounding phrases
he performed one of the most daringacts of open-air
appeal to Americans in ways that Lincoln had perfected
sleight of hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting.
in his debates over the Constitution during the 1850s.
Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his
During that time Lincoln found the language, the imor her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed
agery, the myths, that are given their best and briefest
with a new thing in its ideological luggage, the new Conembodiment at Gettysburg. In order to penetrate the
stitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they had
mystery of his "refounding," we must study all the elebrought there with them. They walked off from those
ments of that stunning verbal coup. Without Lincoln's
curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a
knowing it himself, all his prior literary, intellectual, and
different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revopolitical labors had prepared him for the intellectual revlution, giving people a new past to live with that would
olution contained in those 272 words.
change their future indefinitely.
Some people, looking on from a distance, saw that a
Texts With a Sting
giant (if benign) swindle had been performed. The
Chicago Times quoted the letter of the Constitution to
INCOLN'S SPEECH IS BRIEF, ONE MIGHT ARGUE,
Lincoln-noting its lack of reference to equality, its tolbecause it is silent on so much that one would
erance of slavery-and said_ that Lincoln was betraying
expect to hear about. The Gettysburg Address
the instrument he was on oath to defend, traducing the
does not mention Gettysburg. Or slavery. Ormen who died for the letter of that fundamental law:
more surprising-the Union. (Certainly not the South.)
The other major message of 1863, the Emancipation
It was to uphold this constitution, and the Union creProclamation, is not mentioned, much less defended or
ated by it, that our officers and soldiers gave their lives
at Gettysburg. How dared he, then, standing- on -their - -vindicated. The "great task" mentioned in the address is
L
68
JUNE 199Z
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I have just read yours of the 19th addressed to myself
not emanctpation but the preservation of self-governthrough the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any
ment. We assume today that self-government includes
statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know
self-rule by blacks as well as whites; but at the time of his
to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert
appearance at Gettysburg, Lincoln was not advocating
them.
If there be in it any inferences which I may beeven eventual suffrage for Mrican-Americans. The Getlieve to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue
tysburg Address, for all its artistry and eloquence, does
against them. If there be pcrceptable in it an impatient
not directly address the prickliest issues of its historical
and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old
moment.
friend, whose heart I have.always supposed to be right.
Lincoln was accused during his lifetime of clever evaObviously, Lincoln did not agree with the aspersions that
sions and key silences. He was especially indirect and
Greeley had cast, but this was not a matter he could usehard to· interpret on the subject of slavery. That puzzled
fully pursue "now and here." In the same way, Lincoln
his contemporaries, and has infuriated some later stupreferred agnosticism about blacks' intellectual inferioridents of his attitude. Theodore Parker, the Boston
ty to whites, and went along with the desire to keep them
preacher who was the idol of Lincoln's law partner,
socially inferior. As George Fredrickson points out, agWilliam Herndon, found Lincoln more clever than prinnosticism rather than certainty about blacks' intellectual
cipled in his 1858 Senate race, when he debated Stephen
disability was the liberal position of that time, and there
Douglas. Parker initially supported William Seward for
was nothing Lincoln or anyone else could do about social
President in 1860, because he found Seward more forthmixing. Lincoln refused to let the matter of political
right than Lincoln in his opposition to slavery. But Seequality
get tangled up with such emotional and (for the
ward probably lost the Republican nomination btcause of
time)
unresolvable
issues. What, for him, was the nub,
that forthrighmess. Lincoln was more cautious and cirthe
realizable
minimum-which
would be hard enough
cuitous. The reasons for his reserve before his nominathe
first
place?
to
establish
in
tion are clear enough-though that still leaves the omisAt the very least, it was wrong to treat human beings as
sions of the Gettysburg Address to be explained.
property.
Lincoln reduced the slaveholders' position to
Lincoln's political base, the state of Illinois, runs down
absurdity
by
spelling out its consequences:
to a point (Cairo) farther south than all of }Vhat became
West Virginia, and farther south than most of Kentucky
If it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take
and Virginia. The "Negrophobia" of Illinois led it to vote·
and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to
overwhelmingly in 1848, just ten years before the Linbuy them where they can buy them cheapest; and that
undoubtedly will be on the coast of Mrica ... [where a
coln-Douglas debates, to amend the state constitution so
slavetrader] buys them at the rate of about a red cotton
as to deny freed blacks all right of entry to the state. The
handkerchief a head. This is very cheap.
average vote of the state was 79 percent for exclusion,
though southern and some central counties were probaWhy do people not take advantage of this bargain? Bebly more than 90 percent for it. Lincoln knew the racial
cause they will be hanged like pirates if they try. Yet if
geography of his own state well, and calibrated what he
slaves are just on~ ~orm of property like any other,
had to say about slavery according to his audience.
it is a great abridgement of the sacred right of self-govLincoln knew it was useless to promote the abolitionist
ernment
to hang men for engaging in this profitable
position in Illinois. He wanted to establish some common
trade!
ground to hold together the elements of his fledgling ReNot only had the federal government, following internapublican Party. Even as a lawyer, Herndon said, he contional sentiment, outlawed the slave trade, but the docentrated so fiercely on the main point to be established
mestic slave barterer was held in low esteem, even in the
("the nub") that he would coooede almost any ancillary
South:
matter. Lincoln's accommodation to the prejudice of his
time did not imply any agreement with the points he
You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an
found it useless to dispute. One sees his attitude in the
honest man. Your children must not play with his....
disarming concession he made to Horace Greeley, in orNow why is this? You do not so ueat the man who deals
- in com, cattle or tobacco. -·
"der to get to the nub of their disagreement:
JUNE 199Z
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And wha kind of propnty is "set free"? People do not
.. free" houses or their manufactures to fend for themselves. But there were almost hillf a million freed blacks
in Lincoln's America:
How comes this vast amount of property to be running
about without owners? We do not see free horses or
free cattle running at large.
Lincoln said that in 1854, three years before Chief Justice
Roger Taney declared, in the Dred Scott case. that slaves
were movable property like any other chattel goods. The
absurd had become law. No wonder Lincoln felt he had
to fight for even minimal recognition of human rights.
If the black man owns himself and is not another person's property, then he has rights in the product of his
labor:
I agree with Judge Douglas [the Negro] is not my equal
in many respects--Certainly not in color, perhaps not in
moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat
the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his
own hand earns, Itt is my equal and tltt equal of Judge
Douglas, and tilt equal oftt•try lif-·ing man.
Lincoln, as often. was using a Bible text, and one with a
sting in it. The mrse of mankind in general, that "in the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" (Genesis 3: 19), is,
at the least. a rig/11 for blacks.
Lincoln tried to use one prejudice against another.
There was in Americans a prejudgment in favor of anything biblical. There was also antimonarchical bias. Lincoln put the text about eating the bread of one's own
sweat in an American context of antimonarchism.
That is the issue that will continue in this country
when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself
shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these
two principles-right and wrong-throughout the
world. They are the two principles that have stood face
to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the
same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is
the same spirit that says. "You work and toil and cam
bread, and I'll eat it." [Loud applause.] No matter in
what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king
who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and
live by the fruit of their labor. or from one race of men
as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same
tyrannical principle.
70
i· .:
In at least these two ways. then. slavery is wrong. One
cannot own human beings. and one should not be in the
position of a king over human beings.
Lincoln knew how to sneak around the frontal defenses of prejudice and find a back way into agreement with
bigots. This explains. at the level of tactics, the usefulness to Lincoln of the Declaration of Independence~
That revered document was antimonarchical in· the common perception, and on that score unchallengeable. But
because it indicted King George III in terms of the equality of men. the Declaration committed Americans to
claims even more at odds with slavery than with kingship-since kings do not necessarily claim to own their
subjects. Put the claims of the Declaration as mildly as
possible~ and they still cannot be reconciled with slavery:
I. as well as Judge Douglas. am in favor of the race to
which I belong having the [politically and socially] su- .
perior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is
no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to
all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of
Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much
entitled to these as the white man.
Plain Speech
L
INCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG WORKED SEV-
eral revolutions. beginning with one in literary
style. Everett's talk was given at the last point
in history when such a performance could be
appreciated without reservation. It was made obsolete
within a half hour of the time when it was spoken. Lincoln's remarks anticipated the shift to vernacular rhythms
which Mark Twain would complete twenty years later.
Hemingway claimed that all modem American novels are
.the offspring.of Ht«Jie!Jerry Finn. It is no greater exagger-:
ation to say that all modem political prose descends from
the Gettysburg Address.
The address looks less mysterious than it should to·
those who believe there is such a thing as "natural
speech." All speech is unnatural. It is anificial. Believers
in "anless" or "plain" speech think that rhetoric is added
to some prior natural thing, like cosmetics added to the
unadorned face. But human faces are born, like kitten
faces. Words are not born in that way. Human babies, unlike kittens, later produce an anifact called language, and
they·Iargely· speak in jingles, symbols. tales, and myths
JUNE 1992
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REVOLUTION IN LITERARY STYLE
during the early stages of their calk. Plain speech is a later development, in whole cultures as in individuals. Simple prose depends on a complex epistemology-it depends on concepts like "objective fact." Language
reverses the logic of horticulture: here the blossoms come
first, and tlley produce the branches .
Lincoln, like most writers of great prose, began by writing bad poetry. Early experiments with words are almost
always stilted, formal, tentative. Economy of words, grip,
precision, come later (if at all). A Gettysburg Address
JUNE 199Z
does not precede rhetoric but bums its way through the
lesser toward the greater eloquence, by long discipline.
Lincoln not only exemplifies this process but studied it,
in himself and others. He was a student of the word.
Lincoln's early experiments with language have an exuberance that is almost comic in its playing with contrivances. His showy 1838 speech to the Young Men's
Lyceum is now usually studied to support or refute Edmund Wilson's claim that it contains oedipal feelings. But
its most obvious feature is the attempt to describe a com71
ILLUSTRATION BY AlAN E. COBER
... ······:······
.,
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,-
plex situation in neatly balanced Striiaurcs (emphasized
here by division into rhctoricll unia). ·
•
TMir's rtltlS tlu kUl
(o11d •olll] tluy pnftlniUd it)
to possess rlumselws,
anti /Aroug/1 t/umse/ws, us,
,
oftAis gtJOd/J /ant/; ·
"/nd to •Pf'tflr upon its Ai/Js
anti its wlk]s,
) political «<"tjia ofJi1JmJ
and tf[lllll rig/Its;
'tis ours only,
to lrtlnsmit tltes1,
tlu fonnn-, unprofolllti 11J tlu/HI of1111
i11fJodn-;
tlu /ottn", •tukt:ayNI IIJ tlu /apsl ofti1111,
ant/ 1111tom IIJ IISIItptlli~ .: . . ·
to tlu lotest gnurtltiofllli4t/tile sAaiJpmnit
tfte rtiOrltJ to btOrtl. . .
...
..
This is too labored to be clear. One has to look a second
time to be sure that "the former" refers to "this goodly
land" and "the latter" to "a political edifice." But the exercise is limbering Lincoln up for subder uses of such balance and antithesis. The parenthetic enriching of a first
phrase is something he would use in his later prose to give
it depth (I have added all but the first set of parenthese.s):
Tllnr's •as 1M lllSl
(and nobly tlley plf/ormld it)
to poss1ss tAnn.ulvu
(and tllroug/1 tlums1lv1S, liS)
of tllis goodly lontl
It is the pattern of
i
Tll1 ri:orld rt~ill little 11011
(nor longmnnn!Jer)
rt1MI fiH soy lure
iI
i
!
And, from the Second Inaugural Address, of
·Fondly do filii Aoj)l
(jnvmtly do filii pray)
tAat tAis mig/lly scourge of rt111r
moy spudily pass (JrtltiJ
And, also from the Second Inaugural,
. . . 'IJJJitA firmness in tile rig/11
( tJS Godgives liS to s~e tile rig/It)
kt liS strive on to finisA
tile rt1orl we ore in
To end after complex melodic pairings with a strong row
of monosyllables was an effect he especially liked. Not
only "the world to know" and "what we say here" and
"the work we are in" in the examples above but also,
from the 1861 Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois,
m
Trusting in Him,
rt~llo con go ,.;iii me;·-· -
I
.{
7Z
ant/ rrmai11 flliiA Jtlu
anti !Je 1Wf1 fllhrrfor good. ·
ld liS amfolmtl] ltJjN
lAili aU ,.;uJd !Je wU.
And in this. from the Second Inaugural.
BolA pani4s t/epnaJIM lllflr,
lmt 0111 ofiAIIII fll(lll/tl make fltlr · ·
mtlur tltmlld tlu IUIIio• Sllffliw;
ant/ tile otlur fiiiOultl accept _,.
rotlur tlta11 kt it perisA.
ANI tlu _,. amu.
And, in the 1862 message to Congress,
In givingftwa'om to tile slave,
- assure fre«<om to tile frce-:llonom!Jk oliN;, ftlltat fiJt p,
aNI rt~Aat w ptrSnW.
W1 sAa/1 •oiJIJ saw,
or m111111] losl,
tile last /Jest, Aoj)l of ~~»'~A.
The closing of the sentence above from Lincoln's early Lyceum speech ("to the latest generation") gives a
premoniti!>n of famous statements to come.
Tll1 jiny trial /Aroug/1 rt~llidl w pass,
rtlill lig/tt liS dOrtlll,
(in llonor or disltonor)
to tlu lotut gmn-otion.
Those words to Congress in 1862 were _themselves forecast in Lincoln's Peoria address of 1854.
q filii do tAis,
w sAo// not onl] Aaw sllWII tile Ullion;
lmt filii sAa/1 Aaw so sowd ii,
tJS to mol1, anti to l~tp it,
forewr fiiiOnlly oftlu stlfJi11g.
W1 silo// Aaw so sawd it,
IAat tlu sua«di11g millions
offrre At.IJ1h people,
tlu fii(Jr/tl fltJn",
sAa/1 ris1 up,
and t:tJ/1 liS !Jiess«<, to tile lotest gmm~tions.
It would be wrong to think that Lincoln moved toward
the plain style of the GettySburg Address just by writing
shorter, simpler sentences. Actually, that address ends
with a very long sentence-eighty-two words, ·almost· a--·--·
third of the whole talk's length. So docs the Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln's second most famo~s piece of eloquence: its final sentence runs to seventy-five words. Because of his early experiments, Lincoln's prose acquired a
flexibility of structure, a rhythmic pacing, a variation in
length of words and phrases and clauses and sentences.
that make his sentences move "naturally," for all their
density and scope. We get inside his verbal workshop
when we see how he recast the suggested conclusion to
his First Inaugural given him by William Seward. Every
·sentence is-improved, in rhythm, emphasis, or clarity:
JUNE 199%
• <
�THE ATLASTIC MO:-!THLY
•
Seward
Lincoln
lrclose.
I am loth to close. ·
.
-.... , We are not, we must not be
aliens or enemies. but
fcllow<aunaymen and
r ·.•
krechren.
We arc not enemies. but
friends. We must not be
enemies.
.•
Though passion may have
strained, it must not break
our bonds of affection.
·~Al~:ugh passion has
strained i)ur bonds of affection too hardly, they must
not, I am sure they wiD noc,
be broken.
The mystic chords which,
proceeding from so many
batde-ficlds and so many
patriot graves. pass through
all the hearts and all the
hearths in this broad continent· of ourS, will yet harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by
the guardian angel of the
nation.
The mystic chords of
memory, succ:hing from
every batdc-ficld, and patriot grave, to every living
heart and hearthstone, all
over this broad land, will
yet swell the chorus of the
Union, when again
touched, as surely they
will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Lincoln's lingering monosyllables in the first sentence
seem to cling to the occasion, not wanting to break off the
communication on whiclt the last hopes of union depend.
He simplified the next sentence using two terms ("enemies," "friends") where Seward had used two pairs
("aliens" and "enemies," "fellow-countrymen" and
"brethren"), but Lincoln repeated "enemies" in the urgent words "We must not be enemies." The next sentence was also simplified, to play off against the long,
complex image of the concluding sentence. The "chords
of memory"are not musical sounds. Lincoln spelled
"chord" and "cord" indiscriminately; they are the same
etymologically. He used the geometric term "chord" for a
line across a circle's arc. On the other hand, he spelled
the word "cord" (in an 1858 speech) when calling the
Declaration of Independence an electrical wire sending
messages to American hearts: "the elecuic cord in that
Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and libertyloving men together."
Seward knew that the chord to be breathed on was a
· string (of a harp or lute, though his "chords proceeding
from graves" is grotesque). Lincoln suetched the cords
between graves and living hearts, as in his earlier image
of the Declaration. Seward also got ethereal when he
talked of harmonies that come from breathing on the
chords. Lincoln was more believable (and understandable) when he had the better angels of our nature touch
the cords to swell the chorus of union. Finally, Seward
made an. odd picture to get his jingle of chords passing
through "hearts and hearths." Lincoln stretched the
chords from graves to hearts and hearthstones. He got rid
of the crude rhyme by making achiastic (a-b-b-a:) cluster
74
of "living heart and hearthstone"; the vital heart is conuasted with the inert hearth-stuff. Seward's clumsy image. of stringing together these two different items has
disappeared. Lincoln gave to Seward's fustian a pointedness of imagery, a euphony and interplay of short and
long sentences and phrases, that lift the conclusion almost to the level of his own best prose.
The spare quality of Lincoln's prose did not c:Ome naturally but was worked at. Lincoln not only read aloud, to
think his way into sounds, but also wrote as a way of ordering his thought. He had a keenness for analytical exercises. He was proud of the mastery he achieved over
Euclid's Elements, which awed Herndon and others. He
loved the study of grammar, which some think the most
arid of subjects. Some claimed to remember his gift for
spelling, a view that our manuscripts disprove. Spelling a5
he had to learn it (separate from etymology). is more arbitrary than logical. It was the logical side of language-the
principles of order as these reflect patterns of thought or
the external world-that appealed to him.
He was also, Herndon tells us, laboriously precise in
his choice of words. He would have agreed with Mark
Twain that the difference between the right word and
the nearly right one is that between lightning and a
lightning bug. He said, debating Douglas, that his foe
confused a similarity of words with a similarity of
things-as one might equate a horse chestnut with a
chestnut horse.
As a speaker, Lincoln grasped Twain's later insight:
"Few sinners arc saved after the first twenty minutes of a
sermon." The trick, of course, was not simply to be brief
but to say a great deal in the fewest words. Lincoln jusdy
boasted of his Second Inaugural's seven hundred words,
"Lots of wisdom in that document, I suspect." The same
is even truer of the Gettysburg Address, which uses fewer than half that number of words.
The unwillingness to waste words shows up in the address's telegraphic quality-the omission of coupling
words, a technique rhetoricians call asyndeton. Triple
phrases sound as to a drumbeat, with no "and" or "but"
to slow their insistency:
fiH orr engaged • ..
Wt arr met ...
We Aaw comt .••
can not dedicate ...
not cons«rtZte • • .
fiH can notllai/Ofi/J • . .
fi/JI
fiH can
tluzt from tluse llonorrtl deflll. • .
tluzt fiH 11m llig/1/y rrsolfJt • • •
tluzt litis notion, under God . ..
government of tlu people,
lly tlu jJeople,
for /lie people ...
JUNE 199Z
i' _,,·_- - - - - - - - '
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Despite the suggestive images of birth, a:stin&·andrebirth, the speech is surprisingly bare of omamenr. ·The
llfnguage itseJf is made strenuous. ia musculaturC: .easily
·.. traced, so that even the grammar becomes a form of
· rhetoric. By repeating the antecedent as often as possi- ·
ble, instead of referring to it indira:dy by pronouns like
i , . · ~jt"$nd "they," or by backward referential woids like
·• .-'tltformer" and "latter," Lincoln interlocks his senten~
&taking of them a constantly self-referential system. This
linking
by explicit repetition amounts £0 a kind of
hook-and-eye method for joining the parts of his address.
The rhetorical devices are almost invisible, since they use
no figurative language. (I highlight them typographically
here.)
u'P
•
•
AS IN THE DAYS
OF THE PROPHETS
Love took the words right out of my mouth.
Not the making of love, the clinging and plunge,
The tongue's deep spiral, but the acts of days,
The sun up and down, the dish and the pot,
The light on the head of first one, then another,
The stairs unswept, the bed cold. the light out,
The papers brought in, the bed made, the money
Paid out. the bulbs dug, the children reverent
At what came next. the rise and the fall
Of coral and ocher, the folding and sorting,
The endless numbering of things, the walking
With babies in slings, in backpacks, in'"suollers,
Then hand in hand, then the hand dropped
And one of them up to my shoulder, eyeing,
Before I do, the hawk or the waxwing,
The junco, the hermit thrush in the depths
Of our gun-shot city, and just to the south
The great hill we climb, by season, together,
Alone, in pairs, in trios, the slapping
Of mud from our shoes on the back steps again,
The chastening memory of the otter plunging
In the icy water of his adequate tank
At the base of that hill, and love made the otter,
Love made the mud, the ice-slicked bark,
The meals, the shining
and the sleep,
The risings, the children, the hawk's spiral.
Love took the words right out of my mouth.
heads,
~.
.-
-.
-CAristoplur l11t~~ Con6rJ
76
Four score and seven y~rs ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent. llllftlllllliOII, ttmaiwtJ in Liberty, 111111 tletliu.li#JtJ to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in A GREAT CIVIL WAR. teSting
whether tllatllllliot1, or any nation so CDtu:eiwtl 111111 so tletliamd, can long endure.
We are met on a greatBAT/l.E-FIELDofTHAT.WAR.
We have come to tletl'talll a portion of THAT FIELD, as
a final resting place for those who here gave their lives
that IAat llllliofl might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But. in a larger sense, we can not tletlieau--we can
not CDtiS«T''lk--we can not hallow-this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here. have CDfiSK'I"(IIHi it. far above our poor power to
add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say he~ but it can never forget what
·
they did here: ·
It is for us the living, rather, to be tletJ'ICIJkt/ here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
d~dicated to the great task remaining before us-that
from THESE HONORED DEAD we take increased devotion. to that cause for which they gave the ·aast full
measure of devotionthat we here highly resolve that THESE DEAD shall
not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, ·
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.
Each of the paragraphs printed separately here is
bound to the preceding and the following by some resumptive element. Only the first and last paragraphs do
not (because they cannot) have this two-way connection
to their setting. Not all of the "pointer" phrases replace
grammatical antecedents in the technical sense. But Lincoln makes them perform analogous work. The nation is
declared to be "dedicated" before the term is given further uses for in~ividuals present at the ceremony, who repeat (as it were) the national consecration. The compactness of the themes is emphasized by this reliance on a
few words in different contexts.
A similar linking process is performed, almost subliminally, by the repeated pinning of statements to tllis
field, tllese dead, who died ~. for tllat kind of nation.
··The reverential touching, over and over, of the charged
• moment and place leads Lincoln to use "here" eight
times in the short text. the adjectival "that" five times,
and "this" four times. The spare vocabulary is not impoverishing, because of the subtly interfused constructions, in which the classicist Charles Smiley identified
"two antitheses, five cases of anaphora. eight instances
of balanced phrases and clauses, thirteen alliterations."
"Plain speech" was never less artless. Lincoln forged a
new lean language to humanize and redeem the first
modem war.
This was the perfect medium for- changing the way
JUNE 199Z
�T II t-: :\ T
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I
.
··.~.~.~~.~.~.~~.,!'~~.4..~ .... .
(~.~~.~.~~.~~~: ... .
':.i
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most Amermans thought about the nation's founding.
Lincoln did not argue law or history, as Daniel Webster
had. He made history. He came not to present a theory
but to impose a symbol, one tested in experience and appealing to national values, expressing emotional urgency
in calm abstractions. He came to change the world, to effect an intellectUal revolution. No other words could have
done it. The miracle is that these words did. In his brief ·
time before the crowd at Geaysburg he wove a spell that
has not yet been broken-he called up a new nation out
of the blood and trauma.
Making Union a Reality
AMES MCPHERSON HAS DESCRIBED LINCOLN AS A
J
•
revolutionary in terms of the economic and other
physical changes he effected, whether intentionally
or not-a valid point that McPherson discusses sensibly. But Lincoln was a revolutionary in another sense as
well-the one Willmoore Kendall denounced him for: he
not only presented the Declaration of Independence in a
new light, as a matter offounding law, but put its central
proposition, equality, in a newly favored position as a
principle of the Constitution (whereas, as the Chicago
Times noticed, the Constitution never uses the word).
What had been mere theory in the writings of james Wilson, joseph Story, and Daniel Webster-that the nation
preceded the states, in time and importance-now became a lived reality of the American tradition. The results of this were seen almost at once. Up to the Civil
War "the United States" was invariably a plural noun:
"The United States are a free country." Mter Gettysburg
it became a singular: "The United States is a free country." This was a result of the whole mode of thinking that
Lincoln expressed in his acts as well as his words, making
union not a mystical hope but a constitutional reality.
When, at the end of the address, he referred to government "of the people, by the people, for the people," he
was not, like Theodore Parker, just praising popular government as a Transcendentalist's ideal. Rather, like
Webster, he was saying that America was a people accepting as its great assignment what was addressed in the
Declaration. This people was "conceived" in 1776, was
"brought forth" as an entity whose birth was datable
("four score and seven years" before) and placeable ("on
this continent"), and was_capable of receiving a_ "new
birth of freedom."
JUNE 199Z
Thus Abraham Lincoln changed the way people
thought about the Constitution. For a states'-rights advocate like Willmoore Kendall, for an "originill intent" advocate like Edwin Meese, the politics of the United
States has all been misdirected since that time. The
Fourteenth Amendment was, in their view, ultimately
boodegged into the Bill of Rights. But as soon as it was
ratified, the Amendment bepn doing harm, in the eyes ·
of strict constructionists.
·
As Robert Bork put it:
Unlike the [Fourteenth Amendment's) other two
clauses, [the due-process clause) quickly displayed the
same capacity· to accommodate judicial constitu~ion
making which Taney had found in the fifth amendment's version.·
Bork, too, thinks that equality as a national commitment
has been sneaked into the Constitution. There can be
little doubt about the principal culprit. As Kendall put
it, Lincoln's use of the phrase from the Declaration
about all men being equal is an attempt "to wrench from
it a single proposition and make that our supreme
commitment."
We should not allow [Lincoln)-not at least without
some probing inquiry-to "steal" the game, that is, to
accept his interpretation of the Declaration, its place in
our history, and its meaning as "true," "correct," and
"binding."
But, as Kendall himself admitted, the professors, the
textbooks, the politicians, the press, !taw overwhelmingly accepted Lincoln's vision. The Gettysburg Address
has become an authoritative expression of the American
spirit-as authoritative as the Declaration itself, and perhaps even more influential, since it determines how we
read the Declaration. For most people now, the Declara,.
tion means what Lincoln told us it means, as he did
to correct the Constitution without overthrowing it.
It is this correction of the spirit, this intellectual revolution, that makes attempts to go back beyond Lincoln to
some earlier version so feckless. The proponents of
states' rights may have arguments to advance, but they
have lost their force, in the courts as well as in the popular mind. By accepting the Gettysburg Address, and its
concept of a single people dedicated to a proposition, we
have been changed. Because of it, we live in a different
America. 0
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79
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THE
.\•.
J,
;·
;
~INAUGURAL
: ADDRESSES OF
AMERICAN
·. PRESIDENTS
i
.. ··
' The Public Philosophy
. i and Rhetoric
, Da.nte Gertnino
' With a Preface and Introduction by
Kenneth W. Thompson
UNIVERSITY
PRESS OF
AMERICA
i"l
LANIIAM • NEW YORK • WNDON
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THE INAl.JGURAL ADDRESSES OF
AMERICAN. PRESIDENTS:
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London WC2B BLU Bngland
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Jlf' · ..
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All rights reserved · ·
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THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY
AND RHETORIC
•
Printed in the United States of America
lt.J; :u ~;.:
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·'. ·~
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••
Co-Publlsfled by arrangement with·
the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Afrain,
Univenity of Virginia ·
.· ...-: I·\
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'II
ISBN (Perfect): 0.8191·3703.0 . ; .
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All Unlvenity Press of America boots are produced on acid-free
. paper which exceeds the minimum standards set by the National
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·1·
�i;-.
THE INAUGURAL ADDR:.ISES
OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
·THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY
AND RHETORIC
.;
"\c....:.
VOLUME VII IN A SERIES
FUNDED BY THE
JOHN and MARY R. MARKLE FOUNDATION
Vol.·( Report of the Miller
Center Commission on the
Presidential Press Conf~rence
Vol. II History of the Presidential
Press Conference
By
Blaire French
Vol. III Ten Presidents and the Press
Edited by
Kenneth W. Thompson
..
~~ .~
·;.i.
. :
Vol. IV The White House Press on the Presidency:
News Management and Co-option
Edited by
·
Kenneth W. Thompson
j •
Vol. V Three Press Secretaries
on the Presidency and the Press
Edited by
Kenneth W. Thompson
Vol. VI
•
Presidents, Prime Ministers
and the Press
Edited by
Kenneth W. Thompson
Vol. VII The Inaugural Addresses of
American Presidents: The Public
Philosophy and Rhetoric
\.By
Dante Germlno
1\
�•
PREFACE
by
Kenneth W. Thompson
In the autumn of 1980, the Miller Center of Public Affairs published
a widely discussed report on presidential press conferences which
carried the imprimatur of a distinguished national commission cochaired by Governor Linwood Holton and Ray Scherer. In the winter of 1981, James Brady in introducing President Reagan's first
press cOnference announced that the Reagan administration would
follow the recommendations of the Miller Center commission. These
included a requirement that reporters wishing to ask questions r!lise
their hands and be recognized by the President so that the circus
atmosphere of the questioning might be replaced by some reasonable measure of decorum. The commission also called for greater
regularity in the holding of press conferences, a practice which has
not been fully observed by the Reagan administration any more than
it was by its immediate predecessors.
In the discussions of the Miller Center Commission on the Presidential Press Conference, members and witnesses who testified commented on the breadth of the relations between Presidents and the
press. We were warned repeatedly that presidential press conferences were but'one arena in which such relations occurred. It was
noted not by one but by numerous authorities that speeches, town
meetings, receptions, or press' or "photo opportunities," trips and
celebrations all were the scene of interaction between the President,
the press and the public. We were ~rged to cast our net more broadly than the press conference.
The purpose of the present study by Professor Dante Germino of
the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Af~
fairs at the University of Virginia is to examine one important sphere
of presidential-press-public relations. It is surprising that so few
ix
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Tlre/naugural Addresses ofAmerican Presidents
· ·'·t I.· ~~studies have been made of inaugural addresses. They constitute the
. :-!' _' ~~f,first presentation by an incoming President of himself and his pro-
._:! ·:. ~: gram. For Presidents who are reelected, th~ inaugural address may
•··. :,, also involve a report on four years or less ofstewardship. As the first
·. , :-'~1 ,100 days of an administration constitute a time when new legislation
~
f,{can most likely be yassed, ~ Preside~t's new ideas and policies are
: ./·. , ·.. )f;_more likely to be received wa~h enthusaasm and warmth at the begin.··
'.lning rather than the end of has administration.
~.,; It would be false, however, to suggest that the role of inaugural
: l ~dresses by Presidents is everywhere the same. The context of such
~ addresses is the spirit of the times. While the President imposes
! ·.ihimself upon the form of the address, it is the times in part that
I1 :w;s
·l:l'' h
ape the President's outlook and what he feels called on to say.
j {{Moreover, each historical era brings with it social and intellectual
.
~t!~ndencles that influence ~ntempor.ary t~ought.
1
· (r,. What Professor Germano, who as Varginia's foremost political
·· -~theorist, asks his readers to ,do is to read and compare with him ~ig
~ ~lfican_t passages from representative Inaugural addresses. That
i '•reading In and of Itself would be a sufficient excuse for the study.
1
_ . ;'t~owever, Germino, as he proceeds, asks a series of penetrating ques::
1~ ~ ·. I;~ _;_~~ons about :each inaugural, its assumptions and intent and the
-~ ~l
~~major direction ~fthought and philosophy of the President who was
.;-.·· .: .. ;~ts author. ,
.
;i ~~-~ · ·:.~~)'~_It will remain for future study, reflection and writing by this high;'!-~-":_ · ::1MY.. original political tl\lnker to examine other closely related ques;, tions. What about the other presidential addresses including those
1
''to the world at the United Nations? What can be said about the formative or deforming influence of the comparatively new profession
of presidential speech writers? Has television had an effect? If so,
how can we measure it? To what extent do the peculiar strengths
and weaknesses of individual Presidents affect perspectives on presi..dential addresses? Has the flight from history and philosophy influ.enced the. character of inaugural addresses? What about changing
~:::,.,:. I
public attttudes toward presidential rhetoric and rhetoric in general?
· -. · ·: 1 L:; Professor Germlno .has not neglected questions such as these.
1 .However, those of greater generality fall outside the scope of this
·j ._little _volume. They are questions to which Germino has pledged
1 , himself to conduct further Inquiry. Until the results of future studies
·are completed, the present study of Inaugural addresses provides an
.. , .
_' Important introduction to the central issues.
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. X
INTRODUCTION
by
Kenneth W. Thompson
The sub-title of Professor Germino's study is The Public Philosophy and Rhetoric. He has seen fit to consider presidential addresses in their broadest context. For this reason, his volume goes
well beyond the technical and procedural issues of presidentialpress relations fulfilling in this respect the charge laid on members
of the original Miller Center Commission. It asks the questions
"what" and "why" whereas earlier studies in the series had concentrated primarily on "how." If purpose and politics are inseparably
connected, an englobing framework of thought is as important for
topics of the presidency and the press as for any other sphere of
politics.
It is worth taking note that in raising the question of public philosophy, Germino has taken a stand (and not for the first time) in
opposition to certain prevailing views in political science. The drift
in the discipline has been away from discussion of values. Leading
scholars have prided themselves on the creation of a value-free
science of politics and society. Whatever his other aims and goals in
this essay, Germino has launched a direct attack on this approach.
For the founding fathers, it was inconceivable that politics not be
viewed in relation to purpose. The fateful division between law and
politics which has been especially destructive in recent American
approaches to international politics was ruled out by the most respected thinkers. Thus Hamilton, Jefferson and Franklin all learned
from Vattel and other European thinkers that the law of nations and
the balance of power must be seen in their interrelationship, not' as
being mutually exclusive.
Only a few recent American writers have sought to revive interest
in the public philosophy. Walter Lippmann stands in the forefront
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this group. The rather critical response to his work which he saw
~~as the climax of his inteltectuat journey attests to the general uneasi·
.f ness of Americans when anyone addresses 'the subject. Similarly,
;>·~Professor Hans J. Morgenthau expressed disappointment that his
tone book which evoked the least reaction of any kind was The Pur.
-ofAmerican Politics. Even those writers who seemingly are conwith the underlying questions of a public philosophy seem to
dressing it in the garb of other concepts such as civil religion.
the public philosophy for· the founders was an outlook and
lb1,ro1aeh far c:loser to the citizen and his goVernment than ideas of
j;Se:Udll)-n~llgion· or political ideology. The great ·merit of Professor
.l!Grennln1n'!C work is to bring our thinking back to its foundations in
public philosophy. It is the public philosophy that takes. us back
~~~~~i~1Jl~:the cardinal ideas of authority, the state, indMdualism, civic vir·
··· . arid power."Because it throws the spotlight on the core of politics
•· Ui'd ·governance, this perspective provides a superior framework for
. considering the relations of Presidents and the press. A narrower
. ltiess on skills' and techniques would merely recapitulate what
;others·have said, perhaps better than the theorist, about organizing
and conducting press conferences.
~~!'We 'liave moved in this series from quite specific concerns to the
1 . ~road issues of the public philosophy. In this journey, the series has
1. tieen guided and informed by the philosopher's principle of procee.,, ding from the particular to the general. Thus we have undertaken to
·leave for those who may seek clarity in a complex sphere a series of
itudles that ittuminate concrete questions of method and provide
Overall principles of philosophy that determine the main lines of
;:. ,· lftesidential-press relations. ·
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The "PubUc PhUosophy"
bt the Rhetoric of
American Presidents
Dante Germino*
University of Virginia
I. imETORICAND THE PUBLIC
PHILOSOPHY
In the American political system, presidential speech commands ex·
ceptional attention from press and public. Such a fact is hardly to.be
attributed in the first instance to a particular president's skill in the
art of delivery. While some presidents have been acclaimed first·
class orators (Wilson, the Roosevelts, Kennedy and Reagan), most
have either been regarded as indifferent speakers, or they have exhibited some idiosyncrasy which often spoiled the effect of their delivery. Thom~s Jefferson was diffident on the podium. Abraham
Lincoln was mocked in the press for the "poor delivery" of his Gettysburg Address. Jimmy Carter often looked tense and unhappy.
Nixon looked-like Nixon. Gerald Ford seemed clumsy, as if he were
always in danger of falling down. As for Lyndon Johnson, here is an
account of a friendly biographer:
Terrified of making slips swearing or using ungrammatical
constructions, Johnson insisted on reading from formal texts .
Facial muscles frozen in place, except for the simpering smite,
he projected an image of feigned propriety, dullness, and dis·
honesty. 1
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• Grateful acknowledgement is .made to the Miller Center for
Public Affairs, University of Virginia, for a research grant on this
project.
.,
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· xii
�•
The "P11blic Philosophy" in the Rhetoric qfAmerican Pre•
The lnaug11ral Addresses qfAmerican Presidents
A denizen of the electronic age, Johnson insisted on speaking from
a monstrous podium, which reporters nicknamed "mother" because
it "encompassed the orating president with ·enormous sound-sensi2
·:tive arms." Addicted to this massive teleprompter, Johnson took it
: everywhere, and felt utterly lost if by chance it had been left in
..~ashington.
·
· As Wayne Booth 'iias written, and as every faculty member knows,
.'.'the primary mental act of man is to assent to truth rather than to
,.
detect error, .. to "take in" and even "to be taken in" rather than to
llresist being taken in. " 3 That being the case, it is not difficult to understand why an American president has an enormous advantage
over
his opposition in the contest to persuade the electorate. As
;;, .
, j
James Barber has said, the presidency
.
.
·.: 1
· i. · is much more than an institution. It is a focus of feelings ...
: ·i .·... [Unlike Congress] the presidency is the focus of the most in•.. ;
1 . tense and persistent emotions in the American polity. The
·'
President is a symbolic leader, the one figure who draws to-·
gether the people's hopes and fears for the ••• future. 4
';i
· ~ . ! How is ~t that the attention of the American public is focused on
the rhetoric of presidents regardless of their deficiencies in technical
skin at speech-making? One answer, of course, is that a president's
: potl~ies affect one's pocketbook. My own reading of presidential
· i speeches, however, convinces me that there is another, deeper rea.':· '< j'· . , ~n~ Americans, regardless of party, tend at crucial times to look to
· · ~ . . the President for hope and for a rearticulation of the nation's "pub:..:···I . ·. lie philosophy.'' 5
, I ~ ··'~:. It is prim.arily by exp~ing the "public philosophy" that Ameri.' I · can presidents engage an the practice of the "rhetoric of assent,"
,!i, :··,· • ·'which, again to quote Wayne Booth, is a kind ofrhetoric aimed at
~!·'.·
."finding what really warrants assent because any 'reasonable person
"
ought to be persuaded by what has been said.''" In this context, the
"reasonable person" Is someone who has been schooled in the com, · · · .:
mon creed of Americans.
'i. .'.;. .: .' That there is an American public philosophy, and that the United
.,,:=·n ·~ ·; States is uniquely a society begun and held together by a body of beliefs typically expressed in propositional form, is now so firmly
:
established as the premise of the most acute observers of the Ameri. · can scene as here to require no justification. American "exceptionalism" is the theme of significant studies by Alexis de_ Tocqueville,
i Werner Sombart, Gunnar Myrdal, Louis Hartz, and, most recently,
, · .··1 Juergen Gebhardt. As Gebhardt has noted, the United States is held
':·_':. '.;': . together by a "civil theology" (theologia civilis) developed during
. ~ ;·:· .:: ,. ·the period of the struggle for national independence. Following John
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Adams, Gebhardt calls this civil theology, "Americanism. " 7
I have chosen to employ the more recent term "public philosophy"
instead of the ancient term civil theology-or the modern concept of
"civil religion"-in this study, because while every society has a civil
theology-or minimal set of beliefs about man, society, and history-the United States has expanded such a minimal set of beliefs
into a set of detailed propositions. At the same time, it has not embraced an ideology, or a set of all-encompassing principles for interpreting and guiding reality, as was the case in the USSR or Hitler's
Germany. The public philosophy, although a more developed set of
propositions than the Varronic· civil theology, deliberately leaves
space for private vision and insight. 8
One need only compare the political cultures of the United States
and Italy, for example, to observe in the latter a sedimentation over
the ages. of diverse regional histories, rigid class structures, and acute
ideological conflicts. By comparison, the United States was created
all at once through the enunciation of a set of propositions held to be
"self-evident" to "reasonable persons." In the matchless eloquence
of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration ofIndependence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness .
Americans then are uniquely a propositional people, a people
cemented together by a public philosophy. As Gunnar Myrdal' has
written, "America, compared to every other country in West~rn
civilization ... has the most explicitly expressed system of general
ideas in reference to human interrelations. " 9 "It is remarkable,"
Myrdal continues,
'
that a vast democracy with so many cultural disparities ha's
been able to reach this unanimity of ideals and to elevate them
supremely over the threshold of popular perception. Totalitarian fascism and nazism have not succeeded in accomplishing a
similar result in spite of the fact that those governments· have
used violence ..•. 10
Even the most cursory examination of presidential speeches confirms the validity of Myrdal's observation. To quote at random from
a recent address, Jimmy Carter's commencement address at the
,
University of Notre Dame on May 22, 1977:
In ancestry, religion, color, place of origin and cultural background, we Americans are as diverse a nation as the world has
ever seen. No common mystique of blood or soil unites us.
What draws us together ... is a belief .... 11
3
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The Inaugural Addresses ofAmerican Presidents
·I· · · Or to quote from Lyndon Johnson's inaugural address:
Our destiny In the midst of change will rest on the unchanged
I ··;}· character
of the American people and on their faith.
••
The "Public Philosoplly" in the Rhetoric C!fAmerican P r . s
The presidential inaugural address offers a particularly fertile
field for investigation. From the beginning, when George Washington instituted the practice, each president has made a speech immediately before or after taking the constitutionally prescribed oath of
office. The inaugural addresses, therefore, tend themselves to comparison in a way which other presidential addresses do not. They are
prepared with extreme care, for each president is conscious that his
words are not only for his immediate audience but for "history" as
welt.
12
I
.~·il' Granted that such an American public philosophy exists, what is
)'its oontent beyond the general formulation given to it by Thomas
-'·Jefferson? Inevitably upon this subject there is much controversy. In
~· .. :.~. ~: ..·. :'a· sense1 the entire- political debate in the United States has con': .~:.,f:; ·-f· :;.
tel the 'interpretation, application, and revision of the public
;. 1./ : ;1· :· ;philosophy.'· ·
·
· ·~
·
.
(fr: ,:1 ;; ••.~· Myidal, writing iri'the context of the post W9rld War II struggle
. · .· I · \'to eliminate legally enforced segregation of":hites and b.lacks.in the
' 1 :· : public schools and in public accommodatrons, especrally rn the
1American South, understandably locates the core of the public
i::·;~. ~: (!/philosophy ln·the·:.concept•of equality. He contends that equality
Al1i'was given the supreme rank and the rights to liberty are posited as
7. Cleiived from equality." He cites Jefferson's first draft of the Dec/ar. · ~ ation as illustrative of its author's intent. In that draft Jefferson
·~·declared 'that all men are created equal "and from that equal Crea. , · ';:·tion they derive rights inherent and unalienable." u
., :' \ ~ :. Even if on.e were to 'grant Myrdal's thesis that equality takes pre:'jcedence over liberty.in the American public philosophy, one would
~~
~~.be left with the question "eq'!ality for what?" This question of
• .,. ' · .:feourse has been a vexing one in the current efforts to reduce the ach
.,'Cumulated effects. of racial discrimination through "affirmative ac1
•·
.!tion," employment "goals" and the like. The Bakke case regarding
:medical school admissions is a famous example of the difficulties of
interpreting the meaning of equality-and of "equal opportunity."
·.. Rather than accept a priori any particular reading of the American public philosophy's content, I propose to examine how that phil , ·Josophy has been interpreted in the rhetoric of presidents. While
~there obviously are other sources for the American public philo~·
'\sophy, it is my contention that its authoritative articulation has oc.r·
.1curred in the rhetoric of presidents and that, indeed, one of the principal functions of the presidency is precisely to engage in this pro. cess. By this I do not mean to argue that the public philosophy is
;what a given president says it is, simply because he says it. Indeed,
. \ <.... .the public philosophy is something given in the culture which limits
the thinking of its political leaders and the terms and. resolutions of
the political debate. For a president to be judged as "successful," he
must manage to persuade the public that he is acting within, and has
accurately
read the direction for the country implicit in, the public
1~~.
r:
philosophy.
1
ll. THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY
IN THE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES
OF PRESIDENTS14
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When one has finished stripping away the conventional cer~mo
niat utterances appropriate to the instatlation of a republic's head of
state, one is left with a core of ideas noteworthy for their specificity.
These ideas constitute the public philosophy of the American polity .
Although there is development and change in these ideas as one
moves through the decades, on the whole the continuity of political
thought is remarkable.
In the first instance, the American public philosophy is theocentric or God-centered rather than anthropocentric, or man-cent~red
in character. Although the form of reference to divine being is usually deistic, the background of the deistic language is dearly that of
Judeo-Christian revelation. Thus, Washington offers his "fervent
supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe,
who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids
can supply every human defect .... " (2) John Adams invokes the
blessing of "that Being who is supreme over att, the Patron of Order,
the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in att ages of the world of
virtuous liberty .... " (11) Thomas Jefferson venerates "an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights
in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
.... " (15) Andrew Jackson declares his "firm reliance on the goodness of that Power whose providence mercifully protected our national infancy .... " (57) James K. Polk asks that "Almighty Ruler
of the Universe in whose hands are the destinies of nations and of
men to guard this Heaven-favored land .... " (90). He refers to
"Divine Being" (98) and "the wisdom of Omnipotence" (90).
Zachary Taylor (101), Franklin Pierce (108, 109) and James Buchan-
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The lnauguml Addresus ofAmerican Presidents
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·. an all have "Providence" as a central theme of their addresses.
·Abraham Lincoln counsels submission of both N.orth and South to
..the "Almighty Ruler of Nations." (121) Ulysses S. Grant invokes the
~aidofthe "Great Maker" (103), while Rutherford
Hays refers to
'the "Divine Hand" (137, 140). Subsequent presidents refer to "AI.. mighty God" (154, 1_79, 196), the "Supreme Being" (167), the "Lord
.~ost High" (177), and the "Giver of Good" (184).
·
;;;, A theme closely associated with theocentricism in the inaugural
;·addresses is exceptionalism. God has made of America his (new)
l ..chosen country":
· .
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No poople can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of
~~· the United States. (2)[Washington, 1st inaugural].
·
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~:/:·· Kindly separated by natu~~ ..• from the exterminating havoc
f!' of one quarter of the globe, .•• possessing a ch~en country,·
'~
with room enough for our descendents to. the thousandth and
'.,;_.thousandth generation .• ·•. " (15) [Jefferson, 1st inaugural].
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[Invoking] the favo_r of that Being in whose hands we are, who
1l ·i 11ecl,.our fathers,. as Israel of old, from their native land and
: ... planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and
1· · i.comforts of life~: ••.• (21) [Jefferson, 2nd inaugural].
' ..:;_ :'(Prays to) that
Al~ighty, Being
•.. who has kept us in His
J· /.·. · • hands from the infancy of the Republic to the present day ....
.
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.. i. ~fa\' (60)(Jackson, 2nd inaugural).
,
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' .·\it. Int~lligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on
. ··IDt Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still com.. ·,,, petent to adjust our present difficulty. (126) [Lincoln, 1st
.@ inaugural]. _, ..
.:, ::t. I·.~~st ~tte~ -~,-b~iief
in the divine inspiration of the founding
', ··:~· 1 fathers. Surely there must have been God's intent in the
\a~t~ making of this new world Republic. (207) [Harding].
· ·. · !~'~ 1 The central idea of the public philo~ophy as expounded in the
::·Inaugural address is neither liberty nor equality but ~'the Nation"
· t_(always . capitalized). Indeed, the main theme of the early
· ·.presidential addresses was the preservation, still feared to be proble' -matic; of the Union. Thomas Jefferson could with his customary
:. ~urbanity declare that '
·
. , ..
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6
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The
"~11blic Philosoph_v" in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Presi•
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed ·
as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be·
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. (14) rtst inaug-.
ural].
Successive presidents, on the other hand, with mounting concern as
the time approached for the fateful "War Between the States," as
the Civil War was called in the South, called for the "preservation of
the ... integrity of the Union" and of its "General Government"
against fissiparous tendencies in the states. The states, declared Andrew Jackson, must
indignantly frown ... upon the first dawning of any attempt to
alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble
the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. (59)
[2nd in·augural].
·
In 1841 William Henry Harrison could complain that "there
exists in the land a spirit ... hostile to liberty itself.... It looks 'to
the aggrandizement of a few even to the destruction of the interests
of the whole." Speaking direly "from this high place" of the dissolution of the Roman republic, Harrison intoned that "in the Roman
Senate Octavius had a party and Anthony had a party, but the Commonwealth had none." Then came his rhetorical climax:
It is union that we· want, not of a party for the sake of a party,
but a union of the whole country for the sake of the whole
country. (86, 87)
James K. Polk repeated the oftsounded inaugural theme that,
after the tumult and the shouting dies, the President, even though
head of his party, "should not be president of a part only, but of the
whole people of the United States." (98)
The theme that the Nation is much more than a Lockeian calculation of interests was sounded by Franklin Pierce in 1853 and James
Buchanan in 1857:
With ·the Union my best and dearest earthly hope are entwined. Without it what are we individually or collectively?
[Pierce, 108.].
It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to
calculate the mere material value 'of Union. [Buchanan, 113].
Finally, the crescendo of concern for the preservation of the Nation reaches its climax in the poignant imagery of Abraham Lincoln:
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over
this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of Union, when again ;
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.
~~ touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
.·~,
nature. [1st inaugural, 126].
~·,_It was not until William McKinley'sJ897 address that the danger
of a breakup of the Union could be declared finally and definitely
i
put to rest. "The North and South," he said, "no longer divide on
. . , .,
i .t1te old lines but upon questions of principles and policies; and in
.this fact surely every lover of the country can find cause for true feli. -~: ·
· Citation." (176) . · .. ·.
·.f4aa.With Theodore Roosevelt there commences an evocation of the
. .
Nation as the center of the American public 'philosophy with a dif~ ·(; : -:~. ·.: ·, ferent accent. No longer is the concern a negative one: to prevent the
:~ ' .. ·.:~breakup of the .Union and to see that within the federal system pre. ·, .' 1 ~ 'iCribed by the Constitution the states give due acknowledgement of
· . ,: \·:· ·.,;,the role of the ·;;General. Government." Now there commences talk
. ::. i) f;
dramatic changes in social and economic conditions requiring a
. ::. / .m~re active role for the national government than in the past. This
· ' . iliift toward an "activist" concept of the Nation is sometimes said to
·· liive been the responsibility of the modern Democratic presidents
(plus the maverick Theodore Roosevelt). Judging by the inaugural
1
1 address, however, the shift toward an activist understanding of the
1 Nation as the centerpiece of the public philosophy is bipartisan.
, ..
1
.lTh'e 'Idea that "tremendous changes" had occurred in American
. . 1. sOciety as a result of "modem life" was the Leitmotif of Theodore
. ' ROosevelt's address in 1905:
~;Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown.
.. !
.-f~We now,face other,perits, the very existence of which it was im~possible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex
· ·. · .:_,,and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the ex••: · :· ·.-!!: traordinary industrial development of the last half century are
• ;_'; .. · '.fifelt in every tiber of our social and political being. (184).
'f,L~ f. J~oosevelt's more conservative successor, William Howard Taft,
'P~ ' offered essentla11y the same analysis in his speech of 1909:
·· · ., !
. ~~The scope of modem government in what it can and ought to
· j · accomplish for its people has been widened. far beyond the
principles laid down by the old 'laissez faire' school of political
: writers, and this widening has met popular approval. (189).
!
It was in the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson's first inaugural that the
new activist interpretation of the idea of the Nation took on definitive form .. Contending that his election meant much more than a
change in party, Wilson continued
:r
The success of a party means little except when the Nation is
:; 1 ;, ·~using that party for a large and definite purpose. (199)
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Gaining eloquence and waxing lyrical as he proceeded, Wilson de..
clared that
This is the high enterprise of the new day: to lift everything
that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from
the hearthtire of every man's conscience and vision of the right ..
(202)
He concludes with a call to national reformation and renewal.
Such a reformation, he declares passionately,
will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been
deeply sti"ed ••• The feelings with which we face this new age
of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like
some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy
are reconciled a11d judge a11d the brother are o11e. [Emphasis
added:] (202)
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The :.Public Philosophy" in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Pres1.
,,
The lyrical tone of Wilson's address, which today would be too
"hot" to convey over the tube (as Marshall McCiuhan would say),
should be carefully attended to as one of the most important expressions of the American public philosophy as expressed by presidents.
The assumption should be made that "reasonable persons" of the
times responded to Wilson's eloquence as a splendid example of the
"rhetoric of assent." Wilson's assertions that the American Nation
has a will; that presidential elections, however closely divided, are
often the indications of a dramatic new phase in the unfolding .of
that will; and that the presidency is more than a merely "political"
office but is a kind of "secular Pope" to use Antonio Gramsd's
phrase, through which the public philosophy is interpreted and, if
need be.revlsed, were accepted as "warrantable assertions" by "men
of goodwill." Thus, whatever we might think of it in terms of the
"cool"· style prevalent today, for the audience he sought to move,
Wilson's peroration was unquestionably effective:
We know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task :
which will search us through and through, whether we be able .
to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we
indeed be their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have
the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose
our life course of action.
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here
muster not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity.
Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance;
men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live
9
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1 .h.Ytng become "citizens of the world."
·~"And yet we are·not the less American .•. We shall be more
;'American If we but remain true to the prin~iples in which we
1 ;.:have been bred. They are not the principles of a.province or a
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continent. We have known and boasted all along that
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. : 'they were the principles of a liberated mankind. (204)
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.Americans into "a new unity... (205)
;:,.. ~fter the allied
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' United States' joining the world and Harding's invitation for the
wo~ld to join the United States were variati!3ns on a theme rather
:·than opposing positions.-."When the Governments of the world shall
'=have established a freedom like our own," Harding declared, "war
will:have disappeared." (210, 213)
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<;alvin Coolidge's 1925 Inaugural contains numerous passages
that read as if they could have been written by Woodrow Wilson
himself. What Harding had with disapproval referred to as the polof "lnternatlonalis_m" seems ag~in to h~ve come into vogue with
the mail who had been Harding's Vace-Presadent:
o''.'! we cannot live uhto ourselves alon• o oo(2151
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What might be called the American public philosophy oftheocentric, non-apocalyptic exceptionalism was given an expression exaggerated even for the lyricism appropriate to inaugural addresses in
the following words of the usually cool Coolidge:
America seeks no earthly empire built on blood or force. No
ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominations. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with
the sword, but with the cross. The higher state to which she
seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of
divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor
of Almighty God. (223)
Coolidge's concluding paragraph is remarkable in many respects,
not the least of which is its presumption of American innocence in
an otherwise wicked world. To seize upon it simply as an example of
hyperbole, however, would be to miss its significance as an excellent
illustration of the American public philosophy. In particular, one
should not yield to the temptation to confuse the American idea of
the Nation with "nationalism" as a messianic ideology of the type
espoused by Fichte or Mazzini in the nineteenth century or by
"national liberation movements" in the twentieth. Whereas the former celebrates multiethnicity (as, for example, President Ford's
felicitous comparison in his Bicentennial Address on July S, 1976 at
Monticello, of America to Joseph's coat of many colors), the latter
typically_arises from the claim on behalf of a single ethnic group for
political independence. A second distinction between the American
concept of the Nation and the "national liberation movements~·
today is that the latter are typically tied to a style of politics compa:tible with collectivism and the single party as the expression of tha:t
collectivity's "will." Even where Woodrow Wilson used rhetoric tha't
taken out of context sounds like Rousseau and the "general will,"
the context of the American public philosophy, his words take on a
different hue.
Indeed, if Wilson is a nationalist of the political messianic kind
-and here one recalls the classic study by J.L. Talmon--so was
Coolidge when he called on Americans to be more national and less
sectional in their thought. (223) And it is difficult to see how Wilson,
the alleged "internationalist," could qualify as a messianic nationalist.
victory, Wilson, in failing health, lost the battle for
·.American. membership in the League of Nations. His successor
· clatined that his victory over the Democratic candidate was a tri1
• umph of"nationalitY:' over "internationality.":
,. ;lifhe.success Of our popular government rests wholly upon the
,f3correct interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable
!. 1Jpopular will of America. In a deliberate questioning of a sug·,! ~~~gested change of national policy, where internationality was to
• , ;:~upersede nationality, we turned to a referendum, to the Amer·.(~lean people. (209)..
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The physical configuration of the earth has separated us from
all of the Old World, but the common brotherhood of man, the
highest law of our being, has united us by inseparable bonds
with all humanity. (217)
patriotic, all forward looking men to my side.. God helping me,
jl,will not fail them, If they will but counsel and sustain mel
·, (202) [End of 1st inaugural].
.
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The "Public Philosophy" in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Preside.
The Inaugural AddreueJ ofAmerican PreJidents
in
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The Inaugural Addresses ofAmerican Presidents
I if:Even
if apocalyptic rhetoric has been employed at times; and even
such' rhetoric (as· Robert Bellah has shown in The Broken Cove·
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ntint} has been present in the cultural atmosphere from the begin-
ning of American history (the Puritans, Tom Paine, etc.), the fact
. .
remains that .the United States has been ."exceptional" among the
.:.:::
· ~ld'_s, pe_oples in _the-circumstances of its beginning. As a "new"
. ·' ~ : ~;: :) n~iton, the, United States lacked a culture extending back over the
, .'.; centuries-or even millennia-in the past which could give it a mis·
sioia civilisatrice. What America needed above all was to be let alone
,.
b>i~ite. European powers. Given that the idea of a national collective
.: t1 · •owm~:. so central to political messianism clashed directly with the
· An\eri~an exaltation of the private individual, and given the Ameri·: can aversion to militarism and dictatorship, it is inappropriate to
·'look at American political life through the lenses of concepts appropriate to Europe following the French revolution. In the American
public philosophy, the United States is a nation under God, not a.
c:OIIectivlty equivalent .to the divine will. The American novus ordo
seclo'rum dr "New Order' for the Ages," was just that-a fresh, novel,
tihexpe'Cted event, but an event which took place within pragmatic
\.; :hiSibry~.'The Puritan laea' of founding the Kingdom of God on earth
:f , ~-· ratlier far removed from the mind of the author of the Declara·
t1o1~ of-Independence. Thomas Jefferson could not have disagreed
. ... :mefie· ~ltli the words of the seventeenth-century English political
·h~·~ ~tli'tf6rlst··a~d.'martyr.;,tcrtlie ·cau5e of Puritan republicanism, 'James
· _:•~ i.. ltatrlrigtori; who had·Wrftten that it was the duty of a "free common. ·. wl!alth" to be "a minister of God upon earth~ to the intent that the
~ · ·wh~le world be·governed with righteousness." 15 Lest one be given to
. 1 extlggerite the Influence of apocalyptic rhetoric from the Books of
D~niel and Revelation on the American political consciousness, one
rieect only recall that Jeffer.ion was the author of the Virginia Statute
· for~Religious Freedom and that James Madison authored Federalist
j NfimberTen.
' ~It Is in the light of the American public philosophy of the Nation
·1· tliat' Franklin D. Roosevelt's rhetoric deserves to be examined. In a
reeent.article on President Reagan's "New Federalism," Samuel H.
~r takes issue with Reagan's oft-repeated assertion that it was the
states that created the federal government and not the reverse. The
~lsource, Beer contends, was "the people in collectivity." Turning
tolRoosevelt's; famous first inaugural, Beer correctly indicates that
· ·~No I other· thematic term faintly rivals the term •nation' ... in
' --, emphasis" in the address. .
~::.~i ~}~~rComlng at the depths of the Great ~epression, FOR's .first inau~
.' , ··i yural was one of the greatest expresstons of the Amertcan pubhc
.
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The "Public Philosophy" i11 the Rhetoric ofAmerica11 Preside.
philosophy ever penned. Through it, Roosevelt showed how the Pres'ident, through speech, is uniquely in a position to offer hope in dark
times by fostering in the ordinary citizen a sense of equal participation in thedramaofthe Nation's history.
The first line of the speech sets its tone:
This is a day of national consecration. (Schlesinger, I,7)
Then he proclaims his great words of hope (possibly taken from
Seneca):
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and
will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the
only thing we have to fear is fear itself ...
In Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural, the Nation is spoken of as a "temple':'
from which "the money-changers have been driven." The task of his
administration is said to be to "restore that temple to the ancien~
truths." (236) What are the ancient truths? Those of the JudeaChristian ethic:
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in
the joy of achievement, in the truth of creative effort.
Our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister...
It is false to assume that material wealth is the standard of
success. (236)
Recalling the Nation from what de Tocqueville had termed a false
"individualism," the President continued: "Restoration calls not for
a change in ethics alone. This Natiorl asks for action, and action
now." (237) After citing some examples of the programs he means to
undertake to combat the Depression, Roosevelt ends his first inaugural with an evocation of the American idea of the Nation as the·
core of the American public philosophy:
We face the arduous days before us in the warm courage of the
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and
precious moral values; with the clear satisfaction that comes
from the stem performance of duty by old and young alike. We
aim at the assurance ofa rounded and permanent national life.
[Emphasis added].
We do not distrust the future or· essential democracy. The
people of the U~ited States have not failed. In their need they
have registered mandate that they want direct, vigorous ac-
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.. ~j}wishes. ·In the spirit of the gift I take it.
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· -~;i,God. May He guide me in the days to come. (End) (239)
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;!,Unless they are seen In the context of the American public philosOphj and the centrality accorded by it to the idea of the Nation, is it
: possible to interpret aright the terms "mandate," "htstrument" and
,. th~ like?· The Nation that is being celebrated is,· of course: that
, founded on the principle of limited government. It is a Natton of
! diverse individuals that is being defended and promoted. As Roose; velt said in his Second Inaugural:
.
, 1. ·,-.goday we reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in
,:ifa suddenly changed civilization ...• In our personal ambiJ~.tions we are individualists. But ... in our seeking for economic
.;~and
political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go
1
· 1 c4down, as one people. (243, emphasis added)
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the rhetoric, of assent, President Roosevelt devoted almost
the entirety of his third ·inaugural to the theme of the Nation. "On
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i each national day of Inauguration," he began, "the people have re~- l ~· · ·-I· newed their sense of dedication to the United States." This time he
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i .... if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Na)f'r:·:,:
;~tlon's body and mind, constrihcted in ~nhaldien world •. l~ved bon,
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· ~the America we know would ave pens e • at sp1r1t-t at
:.;;. · ·'
..•,tfalth-speaks to us In our daily lives in ways often unnoticed ..
.ill.!. It speaks to us here in the Capitol of the Nation. It speaks
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.~States •••• (246) .
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, M·,., . 1 "~the. republican model of government are justly considered
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~':tdeeply; finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the
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. 1 /ihands of the American people. (246)
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The "Public Philo1ophy" ;, the Rhetoric ofA merica11 Pre.sid.
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FROM THE NATION
TO THE SUPERNATION:
THE COLD WAR
Thus far, I have argued that there is a special type of public
speech-expressed paradigmatically in presidential inaugural ad·
dresses-which articulates the "public philosophy" around which
the American polity is organized. The central idea of this public
philosophy is "The Nation," conceived of as a people committed to a
set of propositions (first expressed in the Declaration of Independence) or "self-evident" truths. I have also argued that despite certain superficial similarities, it would be wrong to classify the American idea of the Nation as a form of"political messianism" or apocalyptic "nationalism." Apocalyptic national doctrines (such as those
of Fichte in Germany or Mazzini in Italy) call for the transformation
of the world by the "redeemer" nation into a perfect realm, devoid of
correspondence with the pragmatic world of everyday existence.
The American public philosophy is sui generis and needs to be
interpreted in relation to the unique context of American history.
While it is hardly a mirror image of pragmatic political reality, the
American public philosophy is anchored in that reality. That is to
say: There really was something "exceptional" about the beginnings
of America, and this exceptional feature lay precisely in the fact that
the United States was struck off all at once on the basis of the colonists' affirmation of the "self-evident" principle that "all men are
created equal" and are endowed by God with certain "unalienable
rights." The rhetoric of the public philosophy has been a rhetoric of
hope or assent, as when it was reaffirmed by Lincoln in the midst of
the Civil War or by Roosevelt in the throes of the Great Depression.
Although the American public philosophy is not a collectivist
ideology and ·although it does not claim that America has a mission
to conquer the world in the name of a new total ersatz-religious
truth, that philosophy does make universal claims. Those claims
periodically require prudent reinterpretation if the public philosophy
is not to slide over Into a form of political messianism. So long as the
United States was a relatively weak nation and so long as it could
count on its geographical isolation fo protect it from conquest and
the threat of same, the universalism in the Declaration of lndepen·
dence (which reads, after all, that all men are created equal) could
take the form of America's appearing as model or salutary example
for less fortunate peoples to emulate insofar as possible.As American power grew and its commerce expanded, however, the spiritual
15
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1 • universalism
of the American ·public philosophy-a universalism
which at the same time.grew out of the particular, unique American
experience of founding-threatened to transform itself into an ideal1 ogy of the ecumenic type. 18
,fl~.n ,the nineteenth century the desire for territorial expansion~~monly .known. as -"imperialism'-was satisfied through what
· · Jo~n.'O'Suilivan, editor .of the Democratic Review ofNew York first
· cajJec!. "manifest desdriy." It was America's destiny--so obvious as
t~~e "manifest" to everyone-to "over-spread the continent allotted
tiy;,Providence for the ·free development of our yearly multiplying
· i ml~lions,'~ O'Sullivan. declared in July, 1845 with reference to the
a~~~xation·o~Texas.~'··;,.
. . .
. .
. .
tlt.i.s. ~ignlficant_ that the phrase "manifest destiny;" does not
: . . . ~~r in presl~entiallnaugural addresses •. whose rhetoric, restrain?1·~~~>: 1 t~e .._pubhc. philosophy, .was more sober than that of some
~u~lasts ,f~r the..expansion .of American territoryinto Puerto Rico·
·: ';. 1 an:8 the Philippines at the tum of the century. Nor is the racism of a
, i Joialah.Strong
or a Senator Beveridge, both of whom called for the
11
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t. Aiiglo:saxonizatlon of mankind" evident in the Inaugurals. Such a
·., , ;: ·;~: ::d\#rine of Innate racial or cultural superiority for Anglo-Saxons
•:.cl~rlyivlolated. the American public philosophy's committment to
~· ~J. i · ~ti~·equality of all hump~ beings. 20
.
.
.
. ·:: ·. · ~~.onetheless, one,. finds , In McKinley's Second Inaugural an
~-~ ·~~!~ous.,clalm. to. ~ave,established. the compatibility of the expan. s(on of American soverignty to other parts of the world with the
,; · p~~dc philosophy of.the founders:
· 'i·; ·: ; 0~'!.fte American. people, entrenched in freedom at home, take
1
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IO:~heir .love for It with them wherever they go, and they reject as
::mistaken and. unworthy the doctrine that we lose our liberties
11il'Y·.securing enduring foundations for the liberties of others.
1 ~0ur Institutions will not deteriorate by extension and our sense
· i ·u;o.fjustice will not abate under tropic suns in distant seas. (180)
1
1 .:j McKinley Ignored the fact that in the PhUippines there had al.: ~~ ·, re\dy existed an Indigenous political force capable of ruling the Phil' ippines In freedom for itself. The "rebels," as they were denomina; ted;- were the effective representatives of the people of the Philippines
. j at:t_he conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Onofre D. Corpuz,
1
the; Philippines' leading political scientist, has described the process
ln'•which, ironically, the United States used its superior military
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pOwer
to crush the indigenous Filipino government, itself modelled
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The "Public Philosoplry" in the Rlretoric ofAmerican Presid.
passed shortly ... to Emilio Aguinaldo. On October 31, 1896,
he issued two manifestoes, both addressed "To the Filipino
People." This mode of address was significant. Before this
time natives were known separately according to their dialect
or to their province or region .... Collectively they were called
by the Spaniards 'Indios,' after the old and mistaken belief
that Magellan had discovered India. Now, however, there was
a name for all of them-there was a Filipino nation.
... On June 12, 1898 Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence
of the Philippines, An appeal for recognition by the foreign
powers was issued the same month .... A constitutional congress met in September and drafted the first republican constitution of Asia. The Revolution now had a government, a
constitution, a united people, and a national leader. The Philippine Republic was proclaimed on January 21, 1899.
But the Republic was not to survive, for it was launched in the
shadow ... of the United States' adventure in imperialism.
War with Spain having been declared, a U.S. force sailed out
of .•. Hong Kong on April 27, 1898, and destroyed the Spanish navy ••• five days later; the Spaniards ... delivered Manila to the Americans in August. It was no matter that the
Filipinos were in control of their country-except Manila,
which was under the Americans-at the time. In December the
Spaniards and the Americans agreed by treaty on the transfer
of the Philippines to U.S. sovereignty. Conflict between the Filipinos and the Americans was now unavoidable, and hostilities
broke out Jess than a month after the Republic was proclaimed. The issue was never in doubt. President Aguinaldo
was captured in 1901, and the ensuing guerrilla resistance
ended the next year. 11
In his 1901 Inaugural, however, President McKinley presented
matters differently. "We are not waging war against the inhabitants
(note his choice of noun here-inhabitants, not citizens] of the Philippine Islands (not "The Philippines," as the Malolos Constitution
had proclaimed their territory to be]: A portion of them are making
war against the United States." (182) The mockery ofthe American
public philosophy made by McKinley's address, when Americans
were asked to believe that by supporting a new nation's war for independence the United States was enlarging "the bounds of freedom"
(McKinley, 180) was not lost on many Americans. Resistance to the
17
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The lrraugun~l Addrt'sses "'.I .. ,.,;.."" l'ruidc•"t'
colonization of the Philippines was widespread in the United States,
producing a veritable "crise de Ia conscience am~ricaine," as an observer put it. 22
.
·
.
·
, , In his Second Inaugural, McKinley defended the conquest of the
! Philippines on two grounds. One was paternalistic (the Filipinos
:. \Vefe allegedly not "ready" for self-government), 13 and the other, in a
1 ; curious way, was egalitarian (the United States had proved itself the
j: "equal". of any of the world's great powers by taking and keeping
,,.colonies). As he put the matter:
·
.jSurely after 125 years of achievement for manki~:~d we will not.
!:' i1!now surrender our. equality with other powers on matters
i . h:fundamental and essential to nationality. With no such pur! ((pose was the nation created. In no such spirit has it developed
; , ,~ilts full and independent sovereignty. We adhere to the princi·\'pte of equality among outselves, and by no act of ours will we
, ,·:;assign to ourselves a subordinate rank in the family of nations.
!.. {(180)
The "Public Philnsnph.v" i11 the Rhetoric qfAmerican Presiden.
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, While the easy response would be to dwell on the hypocrisy of the
attempt to conceal the fact of conquest under the banner of extending;"freedom," further reflection suggests that something else is at
work here besides, and/or in addition to hypocrisy. McKinley's
. : remarkable rhetoric attests to the power of the hold which the Amerlean public philosophy had upon him. Thus, even McKinley, with
. :~~~~ !:!hii~condescension toward the Filipinos, felt called upon to promise
~· ••to1.aft'ord the inhabitants of the islands self-government" as soon as
! ,they are 11 ready" for it. (182) The effect of the public philosophy was
! totmoderate an otherwise unadulterated imperialism and helped
I ultimately (1946) to result in the peaceful accession of independence
i to the Philippines by the United States. The United States claimed
that its colonization was no more than a temporary measure (peri haps to keep other foreign powers from tilling a vacuum that might
j have been created by a weak Filipino regime) and to its credit stead! IIi~ moved to increase effective participation in the exercise of power
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i the,.American nation as it emerged as a "superpower" after World
i War II. No longer could it afford the luxury of believing th.at it might
.,
: live unto itself. There was no alternative for it but increasingly to
1
•..e11tangle'~ itself in the web of relationships binding other nations.
!:Th~~ result was that the public philosophy-which emphasizes that
:iAmerica is a "beacon" in an at best shadowy world, and precisely for
18
,.
that reason does not wish to immerse itself in the conflicts of that
world but to remain an exceptional place, where liberty and equality
reign-was threatened in an unprecedented fashion. Woodrow
Wilson had been the first president systematically to call. upon the
American people actively to lead a "crusade" (as distinct from simply standing out as a model) for all the world's peoples to have a
republican form of government. 24 Wilson's opponents, conventionally called "isolationists," had in the end prevailed, however, and the
United States had remained outside of the League of Nations.
In 1817, Thomas Jefferson had declared that America's role in the
world was to "consecrate a sanctuary for those whom the misrule of
Europe may compel to seek happiness in other climes." "This refuge
once known," he declared, "will produce happiness even of those
who remain there, by warning their taskmasters that . . . another
Canaan is open where their subjects will be received as brothers
25
••• "
With the expansion of American power and the necessity to
ally itself with other nations, including Stalinist Russia, against Nazi'
Germany and Japan in World War II, the United States could no
longer remain a "sanctuary" or "new Canaan," separated by the
oceans from the Old World's "misrule." Rather, it had the difficult
task of entering into the "muck" of world politics as a superpower
(especially in virtue of its possession of the atomic bomb) without at
the same time losing its public philosophy of non-apocalyptic exceptionalism .
In the rhetoric of post-World War II presidents one detects a tension between allegiance to the original idea of the (exceptionately'
fortunate) Nation-a sanctuary in the world jungle, as it were-and
to a new idea of America as the Supernation which will save the,
world. While it could be argued that suggestions of the Supernation
11
idea were present all along in the American public philosophl my·
thesis is that there is a decisive break in the continuity of the Amerh
can public philosophy, around the end of World War II, when.
America began to promise what it could not deliver and when moral
aspirations sensible in the American context, and with proper phil-:
osophical clarification and elaboration, for any context, became;
intertwined with pragmatic power considerations to the detriment of.
both. At the same time, the resilience of the older (more sober, at
least as regards expectations for transforming the world) public
philosophy tradition was such that it was constantly reasserting itself
in an attempt to correct any imbalance in the direction of a hyperactivist Supernation idea. Let us now turn to the evidence.
The Allied victory over Nazi Germany left the United States facing
!
19
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another totalitarian dictatorship in Stalinist Russia. It is scarcely
surprising, therefore, to find Harry S. Truman beginning his inaugural on January 20 with a reaffirmation of "the essential principles
of the faith by which we live."
The American people stand firm in the faith which has inspired this Nation from the beginning. We believe that all men
have the tight to freedom of thought and expression. We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in
the image of God. From this faith we will not be moved. (252)
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Against this American "faith," there w~s arrayed the "false philosophy" of Communism. Few sophisticated students of Marxism
would recognize the portrait painted of Communism in President
Truman's inaugural. From today's vantage point it helps one understand how Senator Joseph McCarthy came to enjoy a temporary success. There has always been the danger in "Americanism~· that it
might degenerate into a primitive conformity not in keeping with its
e~olling of the private vision and might adopt a Manichaean view of
the outside world.
. The climate of opinion today conveyed in the phrase the "cold
. war" is very much present in Truman's address. 27 The call to
. "strengthen the freedom-loving nations against aggression" (254)
issued at a time when the United States still possessed a monopoly of
atomic weapons, was a portent of things to come. Instead of presenting the issue concretely as one of containing the Stalinist dictatorship, President Truman declared America to be launched on a crusade to export its institutions and technology upon what was presumed to be an eagerly waiting mankind. A center of this redemptive
mission was American technology. The famous "Point Four" of Truman's address read as follows:
Four. We must embark on a bold new program for making the
benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress
available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped
areas. (254)
·
. President Truman's Inaugural emphasizes that along with alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease, the export of American industrial
and scientific technology was indirectly to bring huge rewards to
American commerce. (255) Taking the place of the "old imperialism" there was to arise what unimpressed foreign observers were to
call the new imperialism of "Americanization." Earlier inaugural
addresses had emphasized the exceptional, unique character of the
20
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The "Public Philosophy" in the Rhetoric q(America11 Prrsiden •
American experiment. Now the Nation, although still present,
seemed to take second place in Truman's inaugural to an abstrac-,
tion called "democracy":
Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the
peoples of the world to triumphant action,_ not ?nly agai~st
their human oppressors, but also against the1r ancient enem1es
-hunger, misery, and dispair. (256)
And later:
Events have brought our American democracy to new influence and new responsibilities. They will test our courage, our
devotion to duty, and our concept of liberty.
But I say to all men, what we have achieved in liberty, we will
surpass in greater liberty. (256)
And finally:
With God's help, the future of mankind will be assured in a
world of justice, harmony and peace. (256)
The abstract utopianism of Truman's inaugural, which could be·
read uncharitably as calling on God to be the incidental helper of
American technology, is obviously at variance with the American
public philosophy of the Nation. Wilson had spoken of Americans as
having become "citizens of the world." (204) Harding had looked_·
forward to the day when "the Governments of the world shall have
established a freedom like our own." Neither the one nor the other,
however, had anticipated the United States, by itse?(. going out and
remaking the entire world in its own image. With the new realities of'
American power-the catapulting of the Nation to the status of one
of two "superpowers" after World War II- serious strai~s upon t~e
public philosophy developed. Whereas before the Amencan pubhc
philosophy was a form of non-apocalyptic exceptionalis~, a~ter.
World War II the rhetoric of inaugurals stressed exceptlonahsm
less, as the new note of the quasi-apocalyptic transformation of the
world in a final battle with demonic communism was sounded. The.
power of common sense latent in the "old" public philosophy helped
to prevent an inversion of American beliefs. This common-sense
recognition that the American polity itself still had problems aplenty
to resolve within its borders and that even its vast military and economic power was limited, helped to restrain the Supernation'
ideology.
21
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Tire Inaugural Addrr11es ofAmerican Prrllidents
I. lhDwight ·o. Eisenhower's first inaugural was saturated with the
Manichaean imagery ·of the "cold war." The contrasts between the
,.light" of the western democracies and the "darkness" of Comnm·
idsm occurs repeatedly.
1 . :rof ~urse the public philosophy from its inception had i~dulged
1 ·In the light/dark, new/old contrasts, but they had a specificity and
an anchorage in reality lacking in the cold war rhetoric. It really was
true that from itS inception as a Nation, America was different, that
l It represented a new beginning, and it left behind ·much of the bag1
gage of past hatreds which had almost destroyed European civilizations. In Eisenhower's address, however, besides the traditional
obeissances to "the abiding creed of our fathers" (258) and to the
~·precepts of our founding documents" (259) there is an abstractly
·1
metaphysical reference to "man's long pilgrimage from darkness
toward light," (258) and to "freedom" (in the abstract) being "pitted
against slavery." (259) The "faith we hold" is said to belong "not to
i us alone_ but to the free of all the world." This faith supposedly
1
'.'binds the grower of rice in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa,
I the shepherd in Southern Italy and the mountaineer in the Andes."
(259) While one may grant that President Eisenhower understood
well the faith of the farmer of Iowa, it taxes our imaginations to say
that he could read the minds of shepherds in Southern Italy and rice
planters In Burma. A curious flattening out has occurred in the
I American public philosophy here. An abstract creed of "freedom"
' I understood as anti-"Communism" has threatened to replace the
j· ·. speclflc. understanding of freedom and equality In the Nation ex! . pressed in the earlier versions of the public philosophy.
; . •n-,Turning to Dwight Eisenhower's second inaugural, one notes that
an obsession with the cold war has definitely replaced the Nation as
Its center. The sober.exaltation of America as the "heaven-favored
land," is transformed into a messianic proclamation: "May the light
of freedom, coming to all darkened lands, flame brightly - until at
I last darkness is no more." (256)
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would be easy to dwell on the quasi~messianic, even gnostic
elements of Eisenhower's inaugural addresses. 28 By doing so, how~r, one would omit the numerous passages expressing the tradi. ,ti~nal, non-apocalyptic public philosophy. Thus, in his first inaugural.•· Ei~enhower assures America's allies that "we Americans know
the ·dafTerence between world leadership and imperialism." (260)
:~hortly afterwards he proclaims that:
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The "Public Philosophy' in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Preside.
upon another people our own cherished political and economic
institutions. (261)
In the wake of the tragic Vietnam War, it has been easy for som~
historians to find an "imperialistic" design in the actions and poli,
des of American presidents. To read them in that way is both to
indulge in the fallacy of anachronism, and to fail to appreciate the
continuing resilience of the public philosophy. It would be more ac~
curate to say that, having become a superpower, the United States
was at times proclaimed in presidential rhetoric to be a supernation.
But this was only one note in the presidential music. Exaggerated
claims were made on behalf of the ability of the United States to influence world developments. At the same time, the United States
was arrayed in a very pragmatic sense against the expansion of
Soviet power. It became easy to yield to Manichaean temptations (to
view one's own side as the repository of all goodness and the other of
all evil) when one measures one's own public philosophy based on
the dignity of the person against a regime which crushes dissent in
its satellites with tanks (Budapest, Prague), and walls in their people
(Berlin).
Postwar United States rhetoric and policy, however, have been
based neither on apocalyptic, messianic nationalism nor on power·
driven imperialism, but rather on a confused (and confusing) at·
tempt to apply the traditional American public philosophy of theocentric, non-apocalyptic exceptionalism to a world which failed to
take America for its model. The result has been the arbitrary divi.
sion of the world into that of the "free" and the "enslaved," even
though a majority of the countries with whom the United States has
made alliances can scarcely be called "free" in the American public
philosophy's understanding of freedom. Instead of being defined in
relation to that philosophy, freedom becomes defined as non-Com·
monist. The non Communist nations of the world are the "free"
ones in cold war presidential rhetoric. Hence presidential rhetoric
concerning foreign policy becomes a mysterious blending of the pub·
lie philosophy's aspirations with the pragmatic power situation of
the post World War II world.
There is one passage in Dwight Eisenhower's second inaugural
which in a particularly effective way captures the peculiar blend of
the traditional public philosophy of the Nation with the new prag·
matic realities:
For one truth must rule all we think and all we do. No people
can live to itself alone. The unity of all who dwell in freedom is
f.
22
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The Inaugural Addrenu ofAmerican Presidents
their only sure defense .••• No nation can longer be a fortress,
.. ~ lone and strong and safe. And any people, seeking such shelter
. for themselves, can now build only their owri prison. (265)
•
·if· The key words in the passage are "The unity of all who dwell in
. freedom is their only_ sure defense." "Freedom" is here defined as
fi'ee from Communism." A nation is "free" not if it shares the aspirations of the American public philosophy (although such sharing
.~uld be preferable, of eourse) but whether it is free from Communist (here undifferentiated as to whether it be Soviet, Chinese, or
indigenous) domination. Here, on January 21, 1957, President Eisenhower articulated a version of the American public philosophy that
would lead the country into the disastrous Vietnam War. Going far
beyond the principle that the United States could not live unto itself
atone-a principle which the American public philosophy had itever
ltenied-Eisenhower·pronounced the American nation to be part qf
something called the "unity of all who dwell in freedom." In behalf
of this abstract "unity" which is said to be America's."only sure defense/'r the United States later committed itself to intervening in
behalf of South Vietnam.
~The United States, it should be noted, was not said to be simply a
. part' of that alleged "unity of all who dwell in freedom." Rather as
. ; · the ·superpower, now become the Supemation, it assumed the responsibllity·for the wellbeing of that "unity." As the "leader of the
free world" it could not stand idly by whenever or wherever the world
i unity of the free was threatened. The implications of such a premise
! .· fOr' defense expenditures and for all of American life are obvious. It
It also obvious how:serious are the strains put upon the American
publiC: philosophy oft he Nation by the new idea of the Supemation.
t~~ John F.' Kennedy's inaugural continues the trend toward abstract
.. ~\\'perriatlonalism in the postwar inaugural addresses. Although pro··ctaiming himselfand his associates "heirs of that first [American) re1
vlilution," Kennedy·no longer extols the uniqueness of America but
flattens out the Jeffersonian "unalienabie rights" into general
"human rights," which Ametica is pledged to protect "around the
world":
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'· Let the word· go forth : •• that the torch has been passed to a
~~._'new ·generation of Americans .•• unwilling to witness or per•• 1
·.~)·mit th~ slow undoing of those human rights to which this Na· · I ·: tion has always been committed and to which we are commit,~
ted today at home and around the world. (267)
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The "Public Philosophy" in the RhetoricofAmericall Presid•
Here the President makes it sound almost as if all the world is
America, and that the task of the American Nation is to prevent the
"undoing" of the extensions of itself around the world. There follow the by now familiar pledges to "pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to
insure the survival and success of liberty." {268) It was not until
much later, with the defeat of American forces in Vietnam, that the
unwisdom of these words was manifest to most observers. The older
public philosophy took for granted that "liberty" in the rest of the
world was something to be won, if at all, in the course of history
by the peoples themselves. Most of the world was recognized to be
lacking in liberty. With the expansion of Soviet power after World
War II, however, a new theme is sounded. Regimes formerly seen as
unfree in terms of the American public philosophy (military dictatorships and feudal autocracies) now become bastions of "liberty" if
they appear to be threatened by Soviet expansion.
The rhetoric of the United States as the Supernation in charge of
promoting "liberty" throughout a world menaced by the powers of
darkness (world Communism) would have to be classified as apocalyptic extremism but for the very real threat to world peace of a
Soviet dictatorship armed with atomic weapons. For all the grandiosity of Kennedy's rhetoric in proclaiming that
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have
been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of
maximum danger .... (269)
the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 made those words look, if not reasonable, at least credible. The unprecedented international political
reality of the "balance of terror" did indeed mean that the peace of
the world was in "maximum danger." What the Kennedy administration was called upon to defend was not some abstraction called
"freedom," however, but the survival of the Nation and the peace of
the world.
In his major speech at American University on June 10, J963,
however, John F. Kennedy called for a reexamination of "our attitude toward the cold war." 29 Eisenhower's "crusade for freedom"
intended to sweep away the offending Communist forces ofdarkness.
In the American University address, on the other hand, Kennedy is
concerned with a tolerance that could. insure survival:
No government or social system is so evil that its people must
be considered as Jacking in virtue. 30
In place of the grandiose language of Kennedy's inaugural, one
finds in the American University speech a sober reminder of the
25
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. The Inaugural Addresses ofAmerican Presidents
I lt~its of the human condition:
,jJ [W]e all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air.
31
t~.We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
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·it President Kennedy's reminder of our common mortality proved to
i .be. chillingly relevant,~when he was murdered in Dallas, a thousand
I d.ays after his inauguration. It will never be known whether he would
I·
have halted American mllltary involvement in South Vietnam in
; time to prevent the debacle there. What is beyond debate is that
such involvement was consistent with the assumptions of his promise
1 that Americans would .,"pay any price, bear any burden, meet· any
1' · ~·~rdship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to insure the
survival and success of liberty." (268)
1
~In emphasizing the ~·supernational" theme iri. postwar presiden- .
, till rhetoric, I do not in any way intend to imply that the traditional
i public philosophy was missing. Especially in the area of extending
-~~ ·and promoting the civil liberties of black Americans, President Kennedy evoked the public philosophy of the Nation. Thus, in his speech
· ofJune 11, 1963, he insisted that
j ~It ought to be possible ••. for every American to enjoy the pri~r vileges of being American without regard to his race or his
color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be
treated. as he would wish to be treated, as one could wish his
~children to be treated. But this is not the case. 32
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~·Jndeed,it could be argued that despite his obsession with the Vietir.m War, Lyndon Johnson's deepest commitment was to inspire the
· Nation to make new strides in combatting racial discrimination. As
Samuel H. Beer has· noted, the American commitment to "create
Within a liberal, democratic framework a society in which vast num~ of both black and white people live in free and equal inter&urse-:..polltical, economic, 'and social," has "never before been
33
attempted by any country at any time. "
1What Is new in the American experiment is not the mere coexistence of black and white people-elsewhere small numbers of either
raccdlve In relative peace and security as small minority groups
within their respective nations In terms of "separate but equal." It is
rhther the association between large numbers of black and white
people as individuals on the basis of equal citizenship ht the Nation
that is unique to America. ·
· ,. Regardless of his serious technical deficiencies as a public spea·' · · k~. President Johnson offered a great example of the "rhetoric of
lisent" in his speech to the Congress in 1964 following the events in
The "Public Philosophy" in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Preside•
Selma, Alabama, where black and white people who had been peacefully demonstrating for the civil rights for all citizens were brutally
confronted by Sheriff "Butt" Connor. The President said in part:
I speak to you tonight for the dignity of man ... What happened in Selma is part of a larger movement ... of American
Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American
life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is ... all of
us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry . . . .
At this point in his speech, Johnson, as one observer described it,
raised his arms and repeated these words from an old Baptist
hymn, now the marching song of the civil rights movement:
"And •.. we ... shalt ... overcome.
At thismoment ...
"the whole chamber was on its feet .... In the galleries Negroes and Whites, some in the rumpled sports shirts of bus
rides from the demonstrations ... wept unabashedly. " 34
Although Lyndon Johnson's call to America to build a "Great
Society" is frequently treated with derision today, there can be little
doubt as to its effectiveness in persuading the Nation to begin more
effectively to undo many of the injustices done to black people. The
depth of commitment behind the various measures Johnson proposed (the Voting Rights Act, the "War on Poverty," "Affirmative
Action,'' etc.) was in sharp contrast to the cold calculation of how
best to keep the social peace that lay behind his successor Richard
Nixon's support for an extension ofsome of the same measures.
When one reads Jimmy Carter's 1977 inaugural address, it is clear
that the Nation is again at the center of presidential rhetoric in a way
in which it had not been since the days of the cold war and Vietnam.
Although some abstract utopian pretensions remain-as in his declaration that it is America's task to "help shape a just and peace'·
ful world," (Weekly Compilation, p. 87) the emphasis in Carter'~
address is on "help" rather than on "shape."
The first line of Jimmy Carter's inaugural invokes the Nation:
For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor
for all he has done to heal our land. (Carter, Weekly Compilation, p. 87)
He soon proceeds to rearticulate the American public philosophy:
Ours was the first society openly to define itself it terms of both
spirituality and human liberty. It is that unique self-definition
which has given us an exceptional appeal-but it also imposes
on us a special obligation to take on those moral duties which,
when assumed, seem invariably in our best interests. (88)
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Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the
-~~- basic,principles of our Nation, for·we know that if we despise
\' our own government, we have no future. (88) ·
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: t~an liberty and equality? To quote again from Carter's inaugural
.
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. add~:
)J We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and
$~ we are now struggling to enhance equalitY of opportunity. Our
: commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair,
.'_~ur:national beauty preserved: the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.
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wcniave·leltrriecf that mo're is not necessarily better, that even
' our~ great Nation has its' recognized limits, and that we canneither answer all questions nor solve all problems. (88)
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Calling for ·a muting of the Kennedyesque trumpet call to global
,_
in defense of ~'democracy," Carter modestly asserts, in keep-.lng with the long course of the public philosophy:
' :, .Our Nation can be strong abroad only if it is strong at home.
1,· And we know that the best way to enhance freedom in other
I. lands Is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is
. , . ·, worthy of emulation.
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·.! f;.3 1 ·; .. :stf!lbehave lin,.forelgn places; so as to violate our rules and stan:.:.~~.; ·dards,_here at home, for we know that the trust which our
:t.~- Natlon earns Is essential to our strength. (W.P., 80)
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, ,;·course. There Is something by nature ecstatic about the "American
; -~~!dream,!;-ahd-yet this ecstasy.is a sober one. Nonetheless, the peroral '·._tlon referring to ~·our belief In an undiminished, ever expanding
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:American dream," (89) is puzzling in the light of the earlier declara~(:
:~tlon that "more is not better." Perhaps by the "expansion" of the
·!American dream, Carter meant to refer to Its extension to those citi1
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· ~zens presently at the margins ofthe Nation's plenty. ·
President Carter's realism and common sense came to the fore in
l a remarkable way in his so-c•lled "malaise" speech ofJuly 15, 1979.
,.<"Energy and ;National Goals"). Despite his penchant for burying
leading Ideas under a mountain of programmatic detail-his speech-
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The "Public Philosophy";, the Rhetoric ofAmerican Preside.
writer James Fallows has said that he "seemed to have not one point
of view but SO specific belicfs"»-at the heart of this speech the
President made what in time is likely to become regarded as an enduring contribution to the continuing articulation of the American
public philosophy as it ebbs and flows. Although roundly attacked
by journalists and others as a political mistake, Carter's address was
a noteworthy rearticulation of the public philosophy.
After describing the background to the speech--of how he can-·
celled what was to have been just another speech on the energy crisis
and invited a number of people more skilled in reflection than are
the ordinary counselors of Presidents to Camp David-36 President
Carter launched into his theme, "The Crisis of Confidence":
••• I want to talk to you ... about a fundamental threat to
Americ~n democracy.
·
I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure.
And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation
that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis in
confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul
of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt
about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of
purpose for our Nation. (Jimmy Carter, Preside11tial Documents, 1237)
Carter proceeds to show the "American dream" as rooted in historical reality:
The confidence that we have always had as a people is not sim· ,
ply some romantic dream ... it is the idea which founded our
Nation and has guided our development as a people .... Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link be- ·
tween generations. (Ibid.)
Carter's identification of the problem as a crisis of "confidence in
the future" enabled him to draw on the resources of the public philosophy and use the rhetoric of assent in an attempt to inspire hope
in the people. The fact that the speech was immediately greeted with
derision in s_ome quarters does not detract from its importance as a
good example of presidential rhetoric in the service of the public
philosophy. After all, Lincoln was ridiculed by the press for his
29
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Tile lnaiiJural Addre66U ofAmerican Pre6itlent6
The "Public Philosophy" in the Rhetoric ofAmerican Presi.
~..lllleged failure to rise to the occasion at Gettysburg. ·The impact on
President Carter's speech of July 15. 1979 was no Gettysb~rg
address. It was too long, and its most important observations were
sandwiched between a disjointed account of the more thoughtful
advice he had received at his "Crisis of Confidence" conference:at
Camp David and the inevitable list of rather trivial steps on the
energy shortage. Nonetheless, he had broken his pragmatic stride
long enough to reflect on the decline of the American public philosophy in the politics of his time. From that same public philosophy
he had discovered sources of renewal and hope.
We are now too close to the administration of Ronald Reagan to
make more than a tentative assessment of how his rhetoric fits in
with the articulation and re-expression of the American public
philosophy.
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.public opinion of presidential speech which articulates the public
:~philosophy may be Immediate, as with Lyndon. Johnson's response to
'·the events ln·Selma. Such impact has often been delayed, however,
~?as events must catch up with eloquence. Adlai Stevenson's speeches
. ;tn his 1952 and 1956 campaigns for the presidency against Eisen~hower are still reme~bered by many who were moved by them as
~~lassie expressions of the public philosophy. .· .
~1f.i In. an analysis remarkable for Its contriti':)n and humility, Carter
;. Inveighed against what Reinhold Niebuhr once called the peculiarly
j~American proclivity for self-congratulation. The public philosophy is
·Jnot to be confused with mindless repetition of traditional pieties
· I .hvhen the reality Is far removed from the oratorical cliche. As the
.·
· [:President expressed It:
'
·
·j ;1';;. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close.!
knit.communlties,·and our faith In God, too many of us now
· 1
!J.~~ tend to worship self-Indulgence and consumption. Human
1 !~~- identity Is no longer defined by what one does, but what ~ne
i !~: owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consummg
. ! ·~:things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. Ubid, 1237)
. ·: 1. Jt!::ter, :~ld.ent Carter read a litany of the horrors of the recent
·;._,
1
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:.·:: t lit~
We . weie sure th~t ours wu a nation of the ballot,· not the bul-
: ', . .· ··~let, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy
· · .! • 1. · ;~~ an~ Martin_ Luth~ King, Jr. We were taught that. our armies
fl~·· were always invinCible and OUf causes were always JUSt, only to
.
.. . .
· : .· ·'1: :;: :.'~-~ suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a
. i.
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i . j;i~· As had Roosevelt before him, Carter spoke of the need to rally
·. ibehlnd the Ideals of the Nation. He Insisted on recalling the public
philosophy In order to distinguish between an authentic view of free! dom and a "mistaken" one:
.I
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There are two paths to choose. One ••• leads to fragment a-
.~,_ '· tion and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of
1 ~freedo~: t~~ ~g~~ to gras.p for ourselves some advantage over
.., .
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·; . ·;/' All' traditions o'f'our past~ all the lessons of our heritage ...
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1 pol~t~to another_ path,- the path of commori purpose and the
· ·_. • -;·restoration of_ American values. That path leads to true free"r 1;' ,. ~ doin for' our Nation and ourselves.
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There is some cause for concern that Carter's return to a sense of
limits in his view of the United States' role in world affairs might be
reversed in certain respects by Reagan. The latter's ominously titled
"Crusade for F_reedom" address delivered to the British Parliament
in June, 1982, calling for "supporting democratic development"
around the globe through a plan that "will leave Marxism-Leninism
on the ash heap of history" raised dangers of a revival of the cold
war. (Knowledgeable students of Marxism could have told the P~es
ident that "M~rxism-Leninism" had already done a very good job of
throwing itself on the "ash-heap" of history, to judge by the stagn~nt
and bureaucra,ic societies that today make any pretense to following
"Marxism-Leninism.") Reagan's 1983 address to a meeting of Evangelical Christians in which he described the Soviet Union as "an evil
empire" has also aroused widespread concern .
The grc!ltest c~allenge to the persuasive powers of the Presidency
today is over the threat of nuclear devastation of the earth. Although
President Carterl addressed the problem eloquently in his Farewell
Address, and although there is growing support in the country for a
policy of reducti~n in and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons,
the issue has yet to be integrated into the framework of the public
philosophy. There are no present signs that Reagan's Presidency will
be responsive to the issue. Indeed, under the Reagan administration
there may h~ve been a retrogression, as Pentagon strategists play at
their games of 'limited" nuclear war, unmindful that they have lost
their foothold ori reality. As Kenneth W. Thompson has written in
his valuable book, The President and the Public Philosophy. many
Americans have eome to view nuclear war as a "practical alternative" to conventional war, whereas "they ought to recognize that a
war between the superpowers would likely incinerate the world." A
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31
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;~:·: · , •···· ·. , The lnaugu~l At11reuu
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president, Thompson concludes, "must persuade or force the public
to. think.more realisticatty about the largely irieomprehensibte danlers.of.nuctear warfare." And for this the rhetoric of the public philosophy.isneeded:,::.;!:ii . .· ,.j ·....
; ! d:·'Y;i .~;<t·:· · ·
't It .will not be enough for future presidents to show ~traint [in
.tfi the threat or _use -~f United States military_ power]; thej must
·help the public to understand why restraint IS necessaey. 37
4,
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.·:..:h--,"RBETORICALPRESIDENCY"?
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: In the concluding part of this ~tudy, I wish tQ show the utility of
linking presidential rhetoric ~nd the public phit~ophy,by examining
an: argument, recently advanced· about rhetofic and tlie modern
presidency•._, ·;"!! 1
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'•:; Acoording to one scholar, the early years of the 196o's produced a
"bumper crop" of presidential studies, most of which feU under the
designation "Hattowed Be Thy Presidency." Subsequently, he notes
,the pendulum has swung the other way, and the Leitmotif of such
studies has been "Deliver Us from Presidents.":M : .: ·
:~ 1 Today we know so much about the grime an4 grit of recent presidencies that a return to the "Hattowed Be Thy Presidency" theme is
unthinkable.· The revelations about Waterga~e and Vietnam have
left deep scars· in the public consciousness. Ame,ri(:ans have learned
fast ·what they ·already should have known from Lord Acton and the
federalist Papers about the tendeiiey of power to corrupt. . .
j-:·.• It could be, however, that certain institutions_ have-~ way of survi~ing·abuse by their occupants. One thinks of th~ Pap~cy, for exampte.. While Jean Bodin's moi juste to the effect that "a bad man
makes a good king" is true only .in the sense in which Nietzsche held
that truth inheres only in the exaggerations, it il true that a gOod institution neutralizes the mistakes of even i~ most cynical and manipulative occupiers. To the extent that some kind of Hegelian theory
pf history seems to emerge, it is, insofar as I know, purely accidentiat..,lf Goethe erred. in writing "Amerika-du luut u buser," he
would have been right on the mark had he said ''Ameriko-du hast
u verschieden."
In today's climate of "Deliver Us From Presidents" it is to be expected that sharp revisions of earlier contentions about the President's role of "Teacher and Preacher in Chief' have been forthcoming. One of the more interesting and important of such studies, by
1
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The "PubUc Phllosophy"ln the Rhetoric qfAmeric11n Preside.
my colleague James Ceaser and others, argues that
As strange as it may seem to us today, the framers of our Constitution looked with great suspicion on .popular rhetoric.
Their fear was that mass oratory, whether crudely demogogic
or highly inspirational, would undermine the rational and en·
lighten~ self-interest of the citizenry .•••
Not surprisingly, given the above conclusion about the intent of the
framers, the authors find that the "modern" presidency commeli·
cing with Wilson has violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Con·
stitution. But let m~ quote their words:
...
. . . [T]he framers discouraged any idea that the president ·
should serve as a leader of th~ people who would stir up mass
opinion by rhetoric; their conception was rather that of a con·
stitutionat officer who would rely for his authority on the for·
mal pc)wers granted by the Constitution and on the informal .
authority that would flow from the office's strategic position. .
The framers thus created the model for "an essentially non-rhe·
torical regime." Lest one misrepresent their position or obtain a
cheap victory by arguing that any nonrhetorical president would
resemble a mummy, Ceaser and his colleagues base their ·case on a
distinction betwee.n rhetoric that is "popular" and rhetoric that is
"public."
.
These limitations on popular rhetoric did not mean, however,
that presidents were expected to govern in silence. Ceremonial .
occasions presented a proper forum for reminding the· public
of the nation's basic principles and communications to Con·
gress, explicitly provided for by the Constitution, offered a
mechanism by which the people also could be informed on
matters of policy. Addre15sed in the first instance to a body of
informed representatives, it would possess a reasoned a11d
deliberative char~cter. And insofar .as some in the public ·
. would read tJtese speeches and state papers, they would impll·
citly be called to raise their understanding to the level of
characteristic deliberative speech.
Turning to the inaugural address, the authors contend th~t
Thomas Jefferson's address in his first inaugural-a model which
lasted until the time of Wilson-was primarily ail effort "designed to
instruct the people in, and fortify their attachment to, true republi·
can political principles. Up until Wilson's first inaugural, then, pres·
idents consistently attempted to show how: the actions of the new
·•
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administration woul4 conform to constitutio~ai arid republican
principles." •
:· '> ' ..
<;_:.·Against this· tradition Woodrow Wilson ga_.ve the .inaugural
i;~ Address ; ', •·a new theme~ Instead of showing how the policies
· of the incoming administration reflected the. principles of our
form ofgovemment, Wilson sought to articulate the unspoken
~nl desires. of the people by· hdlding out a visioi(_of their fulfill.~, ment,Presidential speech~ in Wilson's view-should articulate
-'ls.'what is "in our hearts" and not necessarily what is in our con;~, stitution. 39
• < •• • :·,
'~·Although there is more to_ Professor Ceaser's subtle and complex
argument, enough has been :offered to suggesUts gist, and it will
perhaps be obvious even before I state it what my re5ponse will be. If
my thesis concerning the preSidency and the public phUasophy has
any 'validity, it will require the abandonment of the' cOntention that
1
there has b'een any' such sharp break in presideiltlai 'rhetoric of the
kind the authors describe. There being no ditl'eieriee between "the
principles of our form..of government" arid the pqblic philosophy, it
i(siritply ,no~ 'the _case".tha~ any such violatioq))r;a~~ndonment or
lporlng of,th05e'piinCiples'~as occurred inpresldentlal rhetoric of
the kind which the authors discu5s.
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'<i Wtiat 'after all· a~ those p~inciples? To quote President Gerald
Ford, speaking at Monticello on the occasion of the Nation's Bicentennial:
.: ' ·
.
··:···[The United States is] uniquely a community of values, as dis'·''tinct fropm a religious community, a geographic community,
':'-:·or an ethnic community. This Nation was founded-200 years
'ago, not on-ancient legends or conquests or phyiicalllkeness or
: language, but on a certain political value which Jefferson's pen
· so eloquently expressed. •
; · ·.
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<':"To be an American," Mr. :Ford went on to say," is to subscribe to
those ;principles· which. the Declaration of Independence proclaims
1ind!the1Constitution protects •••• ".He then';went on to,eompare
Am~rica to ~"the beauty of Joseph's coat" wit I{ its ."many colors."
(1975-'1976)·i ..
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.· .; . . . :;• ~t'is difficult to see how, given the principles of the Aniericari public
philosophy and the necessities of inodem govemment·in an industrialized society, one should or could avoid a presidency that com~unicates. directly to .the people. The Constitution enshrined no
particular:' economic- system; ·and it was William Howard Taft,
Wilson's predecessor, who said in his inaugural:
34
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The "Public: Ph~osophy" in the Rhetoric: qfAmerlCtUt Pralden.
The scope of a modem government in what it can and ought to
accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the
principles laid down by the old ;laissez faire' school of political
writers, and this widening has met with popular approval. (189)
As Abrah~m Uncoln said long before Woodrow Wilson, the
'central idea' in our political public opinion, at the beginning
was . . . the "equality of men." And although it has always
submitted patiently to whatever of inequality there seemed to
be as a matter of actual necessity, its constant working has
been a steady progress towards the practical equality of all
men. 40
The increase of direct "rhetorical" appeals to the people by
"modern" presidents is undeniable, but it is explicable by other factors than novel "dOctrine" of the presidency. The impact of ram· ·
pant, heedless industrialization during the last halfofthe nineteenth
century of the American Nation's commitment to equality was ·
rather shattering, to iay the least; Who could with cause deplore as
rhetoric in the bad iense Wilson's condemnation of the "human
cost" ofindustriai~Zjtlon:
With riches has came inexcusable waste •••• We have been
proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto
stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost
of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and burdened, the
fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and
children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it .all has ·
fallen pitilessly the years through. (207)
a
While one can readily grant to the authors of the "Rise of the
Rhetorical Presidency" their contention that rhetoric is not the same
as governing, rhetoric of the kind found in Wilson's address was
used as a prelude to concrete actions to remedy in part the inequities
and injustices exposed by the rhetoric itself.
. ,,I .
Conclusion
I shall not pretend to have exhausted my subject. Many more
topics, such as whether today presidential speechwriting by a team .
of people who may even select the subjects the President discusses as
he shuttles endlessly and witlessly across the indeed very extended
republic that is the United States has not trivialized presidential .
35
�_:-:-~r
r·:·:·._: ,;. · .
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;helnilugu~~dlreuu oJAmein Pre8~~: ·•
7
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! ~~etoric almost beyond repai~, could \le conside~~:B~t let me leave
! you with a semblance of my main contention, t~.\!!t:Jhe rhetoric of
'
the: American presidency is of a special klnd.when it.is truly presidential irl that it cannot be viewed aright withou~ recopizing its link
to the American public philosophy. Presidentilli. speech is not just
the speech of any politicat.leader who can cap~ure_ a, balcony or a
television stlidio. Because of its anchorage in the publi~ philosophy,
American presidential speech has the effect of.,romoting equality,
for it ·includes· and brings all of the citizenry· into political life as
persons of equal dignity and worth.
·''; · ,',- · ;t:•..•_: . .
I Presidential 1 rhetoric can \also have the effect •of keeping the
foreign 'policy of the United States within the bounds of pragmatic
reality ~ithout sacrificing the nobility of vision. inherent in the trad.ition~l iAmerican public phi~osophy. To do th~i. fut~re presidents
wJU have, to evoke the spiritual reality of univerial humankind as an
open soclety,,The ope" society idea must be. rightly ~nceived: that
is, .as something other than the imprinting of the American public
philosophy or of even more general ideas of western. Democracy on a
recalcitrant world. Rather, to the extent that. the American, public
_philosophy opens itself out to a sympathetic understanding of political styles;different from its own but which at the. same time reveal
human; beings.innately to be ,creatures of dignity.,arid, worth,to that
extent.-it:.will uncover the. universality Implicit h\;Thomas Jefferson's
words' abou( the; "self-eviden:ce" of the truths that ~·au men" (and
riot. just,;Americans).. are created. equal. America will open, itself to
appropriate the.richness ofh~'"anity's pre-modem past in the symbolisms·. of inyth~ ·philosophy,· revelation, and ,mysticism. Perhaps
America
find its "mission" to be to lead humarikirid into a postmodem world of openness to ali the dimensions of reality, nonmetric
as.,well .as. metric•.This leadership. would be ofia spiritual nature,
however.1.and it. would .be entirely consonant,.;with:the idea that
Ainerica.serve;as.model.rather than as master, ari ide,_ rooted in the
traditlon~l
American public philosophy itself•. ·,·,:.-:·
.. ·: ;;. .:
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t!;
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•
Footnotes
Doris Keams, LBJ a11d the American Dream (New York,
Harper and Row, 1976), p. 303.
2.
Ibid
3.
Wayne C. Booth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric oj'Assent
(University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), xvi.
4.
James L. Barber, Presidential Chart~cter, (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J., Prentice Hall, 1972), p. 4.
.
5.
President Carter's speechwriter James Fallows distinguished
between two types of presidential rhetoric: One is designed to
sway .Public opinion on a specific issue of the day, while ••the :
second kind of, •• rhetoric is that which will •.• try to explain
the directions in which things are going." James Fallows, talk
on "Rhetoric and Presidential Leadership," Miller Center
Research Project, University of Virginia, March 1, 1979, p. 38.
It is the second type which I place in the ••public philqsophy" .
category. I am grateful to Kenneth W. Thompson, Director of
the Miller Center for Public Affairs, for the opportunity to
read this transcript.
6.
Booth, op. cit.. xiv.
7.
Juergen Gebhardt, Die Krise des Amerika11ismus (Stuttgart':
Ernst Klett Verlag, 1976), p. 224.
8.
To the best of my knowledge, "public philosophy., is a term
originating with the publicist Walter Lippmann in the 1950's,-·
It has come to be used more flexibly in recent years. See Rich·· .
ard Bishirjian;~ed;, A Public Philosophy Reader (New Rochelle,;· '
N.Y.: Arlingtoi(,House Publishers, 1978); William Sullivan;'
Reconstructinlf.ublic Philosophy (Berkeley, Cal.: University
of CaliforniA Press, 1982); aru:l Kenneth W. Thompson, The
President and (he Public Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State UniversliyPress, 1981).
9.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, (2 Vols., New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. 3.
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36
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BEYOND
BELIEF
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Essays on Religion
. in a Pose-Traditional World
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Harper & Row, Publishers
New York, Evaeston, and London
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9
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Civil Religion in America
And it concluded:
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The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands
the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and to abolish all
forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which
our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe-the belief that
the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from
the hand of God.
While some have argued that
Chris-
tianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue
celebrate only the generalized religion of "the American Way of
Life," few have realized tha,t there actually exists alongside of and
rather dearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and wellinstitutionaliezed civil religion in J\merica. This article argues not
only that there is such a thing, but also that this religion-or perha~. better, this religious dimension-has its own seriousness ~d
i;.:ttegrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other
religion does;'l
.
·,
Tlie Kennedy Inaugural
John F. Kennedy's inaugural address of January 20, 1961, serves
as an example and a 'due with which to .introduce this complex
subject. That addres~ began:
'fe observe, today n~t a. victory of party but a celebration of freedomijmbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying renewal as well as
chanse. For I have sworn before you and .Almighty God the same
solemn oath. our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters
ago.
Tills tll11p1n was wri11111 for 11 Daedalus to11/Wt11tl 011 Amnit1111 Rtligion ;, M.1
1966. It Will ,printttl wit/J tommtnls ntl t1 ,;ointln in The Religious Situation:
1968; whnt 1 tleftntl m1stlf •gili1111 th1 tltttisalion of s11pporting 11t1 itlo/alro•s
fiHirthip of the Ameri11111 t1t11io11, 1 thi11fl it sho11ltl IJt tltllf' from tht teKI thai 1
to•ttifll of the ttntrttl ,,.,tJitio11 of the Amwit11n tiflil ,.,/;gion not 111 " fMm of
tlallo•ttl self-wtmhip b111 111 1h1 sllbo,.tli11allo• of the n111io11 to ethit11l printip/es
thai lf'lltllttntl it
i11 lnms of whith it sho11/tl be i•tlg.J. 1 Jm tonr•intetl th111
""7 •111io11 11ntl '""1 P«~PII tome to som1 form of f'eligio•s· self-•nflnst~~ntli•g
v/Jn/J~r the tritits /ille II tw 11o1. 'RIIIhn th1111 simp/1 tk11o11nt,. wha1 setms 111 11111
11111 it~efliltlble, it 111m1 more f'etJiotllible lo 11111 withifl tht tiflil f'tligiofll lf'Milio•
fo' tho11 .tritir11l prinriplll whith Mntlef'tfll the tfltr/Wetelll tJJttger of n•tio1111/ itlf·
itlt~liJIIIio11.
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Finally, whether you are citizens of America or of the world, ask of us
the same high standards of strength and sacrifice that we shall ask of
you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final
judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we Jove, asking His
blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must
truly be our own.
These are the three places in this brief addre~s in which Kennedy
mentioned the name of God. If we could understand why he men·
tioned God, the way in which he did it, and what he meant to say
in those three references, we would understand much about American civil religion. But this is not a simple or obvio.us task, and
American students of religion would probably differ widely in their
interpretation of these passages.
Let us consider first the placing of the three references. They
occur in the two opening paragraphs and in the closing paragraph,
thus providing a sort of frame for the more concrete remarks that
form the middle part of the speech. Looking beyond this particular.
speech, we would find that similar references to God are almost
invariably to be found in the pronouncements of American presidents
on solemn occasions, though usually not in the working messages
that the President sends to Congress on various concrete issues.
How, then, are we to interpret this placing of references to God?
It might be argued that the passages quoted reveal the essentially.
irrelevant role of religion in the very secular society that is America.
The placing of the references in this speech as well as in public life
generally indicates that religion has "only a ceremonial significance";
it gets only a sentimental nod that serves largely to placate the more
unenlightened members of the community before a discussion of the
really serious business with which religion has nothing whatever to
do. A cynical observer might even say that an American President
has to mention God or risk losing votes. A semblance of piety is
merely one of the unwritten qualifications for the office, a bit more
169
CIVIL RELIGION IN AM F.RJCA
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170
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segregates the religious sphere, which is considered to be essentially
private, from the political one.
Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president
justified in using the word "God" at all? The answer is that the
separation of chw,JCch and state has not denied the political realm a
religious dimension. Although matters of personal religious belief,
worship, and association are considered to be strictly private affairs,
there are, at the same. time, certain common elements of religious .
orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These have
played a crucial role in the development of American institutions
and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of Ameri·
can life, including the political sphere. This public religious dimen·
sion is expressed in a set of beliefs, srmbols, and rituals that I am
calling I he American civil religion. TI1e inauguration of a president
is an important ceremonial event in thi!ii religion. It reaffirms, amonR
other things, the religious legitimation of the highest political
authority.
·
Let us look more closely at what Kennedy actually said. First he
said, ''I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn
oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters
ago." The oath is the oath of office, including the acceptance of the
obligation to uphold the Constitution. He swears it before the people
(you) and God. Beyond the Constitution, then, the president's obligation extends not only to the people but to God. In American politi·
cal theory, sovereignty rests, of course, with the people, but implicitly,
and often explicitly, the ultimate sovereignty has been attributed
to God. This is the meaning of the motto, "In God we trust," ns well
as the' inclusion of the phrase "under God" in. the pledge to the
Rag. \Vhat difference does it make that sovereignty belongs to God?
Though the will of the people as expressed in majority vote is
carefully institutionalized as the operative source of political author·
· · ity, it is deprived of iin ultimate significance. The will of the people
is not itself the crite~ion of right and wrong. There is a higher
criterion in terms of which this will can be judged; it is possible
that the people may be wrong. The president's obligation extends
to the higher criterion.
When Kennedy says that "the rights of man come not from the
generosity of the state but from the hand of God," he is stressing
this point again. It does not matter whether the state is the cxpres·
sion of Hte will of an autocratic monarch or of the "people"; the
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traditional than but not essentially different from the present-day re·
quirement of a pleasing television personality.
But :we know enough about the function of ceremonial and ritual
in various societies to make us suspicious of dismissing something
as unimportant because it is "only a ritual." What people say on
solemn occasions need not be taken at face value, but it is often
indicative of dee~ted values and commitments that are not made
explicit in the..-tourse of everyday life. ~ollowing this line of argu·
ment, it is worth considering whether the very special placing of the
references to God in Kennedy's address may not reveal something
rather important and serious about religion in American life.
It might be countered that the very way in which Kennedy made .
his references reveals the essentially vestigial place o(f'eligion today~
He did not refer to any religion in particular. He did not refer to·
Jesus Christ, or to Moses~ or to the Christian church; certainly he did
not refer to the Catholic church. In fact, his only reference was to the
concept of God, a word that almost all Americans can accept but that
means so many different things to so many different people that it is
.1llmost an empty sign. Is this not just another indication that in
. - Ameri.ca. religion is considered vaguely to be a good thing, but that
people care so .little about it that it has lost any content whatever?
Isn't Dwight Eisenhower reported to have said "Our government
makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith. and I don't care what it is,'.' 1 and isn't that a complete negation of any
real religion?
.
These questions are worth pursuing because they raise the issue
of how civil religion relates to the political society on the one hand
and to private teligious organization on the other. President Kennedy
was a Christian, more specifically a Catholic Christian. Thus his
general references to God do not mean that he lacked a specific
. religious .commitment•.. ~ut why, . ~~~•. dicfl~e not i.llclud.~ ... so.rn~ ..
remark to the effect that Christ is the Lord of the world or some ·
indication of respect for the Catholic church? He did not because
·· · these are matters of his own private religious belief and of his. relation to his own particular churcli; they are not matters relevant in
any direct way .to the conduct of his public office. Others with differ·
ent religious views and commitments to different churches or de·
nominations are equally qualified participants in the political process.
The principle of separation of church and state· guarantees the free·
dom of religious belief and association, but at/the same time clearly
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iights of man are more basic than any political structwe arid provide
a point of revolutionary leverage from which any state structure
may. be radically altered. That is the basis for his reassertion of the
revolutionary significance of 'America.
But the religious dimension in political life as recognized. by
Kennedy not onl~ provides urounding for t~_e rights o~~--!hat
makes any form~~titic;al a65oliiffsffi·meg!timafe~ ·iraiSo provides
a tnnscend7nt ·jOal for the poiitiwprocess~--This. is implied in his
final words that "here on earth God's work must truly be our own."
What he means· here is, I think, more clearly spelled out in a previ·
ous paragraph, the wording of which, incidentally, has a distinctly
biblical ring:
/"
Novl the trumpet summons us again-not as a call tO bear arms, though ·
arms we need-not as .a call to battle; though embattled we are-but a
call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year
out, ... rejoicing in hope, patient in. tribulation"-a struggle against the
common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
·• The. whole address can be understood as only the most recent statem~L of a theme that lies very deep in the American tradition,
namety the Qbligation, .. both_collertive and individual, to carry out
God's will on. earth. This was the mOtivatfrig-spirlt of those who
. founded America, and it has been present in every generation. since.
Just. below the surface throughout Kennedy's inaugural address, it
becomes explicit in the closing statement that God's work must be
our own. That this very activist and noncontemplative conception
of the fundamental religious obligation, which has been historically
associated vfith the Protestant position, should be enunciated so
clearly in the first. major statement of the first Catholic president
seems to underline how deeply established it is in the American.
outlook. Let us now consider the form and history of the civil religious tradition in which Kennedy was speaking.
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of the state and may be freely held by citizens. While the phrase
"civil religion" was not used, to the best of my knowledge, by the
founding fathers, and I am certainly not arguing for the particular
influence of Rousseau, it is clear that similar ideas, as part of the
rultural climate· of the··Iate eighteenth century, were to be found
amon~ the Americans. For example, Benjamin Franklin writes in his
·
autobiography,
I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for in·
stance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world and ~1wern'd
it by hi~ Prm·idence; that the most acceptable service of God was the
doing of good to men; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime
will be punished, and virtue rewarded either here or hereafter. Th~ I
esteemed the essentials of every religion; and, being to be found in all
the reli,gions we had in our countr}·. I re~pected them all, tho' with
different degrees of respect, as I found them more or Jess mix'd with
other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promnte or con·
firm morality, serv'd principally to divide m, and make us unfrienclly to
one another.
It is easy to dispose of this sort of position as essentially utilitarian
in relation to religion. In Washin~ton's Farewell Address (thouRh
the words may be Hamilton's) the utilitarian aspect is quite cxrlicit:
The Idea of a Civil Religion.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prmrcrity,
Religion and Morality are indiliJlCn!lable "upports. In vain wmild that
man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to sub,•ert these
~real Pillar!~ of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of
men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the piom man
ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their
connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked
where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense
of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the in~ruments of
investi~ation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indul.~t> the
supposition, that morality can be maintained without· religion. What·
ever may be conceded. to the influence of relined education on minds
of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect lh:tt
National morality can· prevail in cxclmion of religious principle.
The phrase "civil religion" is, of course, Rousseau's. In chapter 8,
bOok 4 of The Social' Contract, he outlines the simple dogmas of
the civil religion: the existence of God, the life to come, the reward
of virtue and the punishment of vice, and the exclusion of religious
_intolerance. All other religious opinions a~e outside the fognizance
But there is every reason to believe that religion, particularly the
idea of God, played a constitutive role in the thought of the early
American statesmen.
Kennedy's inaugural pointed to the religious aspect of the Dec·
Jaration of Independence, and it might be well to look at that docu·
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ment a bit more closely. There are four references to God. The filst
speaks of the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" that entitle .
any people to be independent. The second is the famous statement
that all men "are endowed bt their Creator with certain inalienable
Rights." Here Jefferson is locating the fundamental legitimacy of the
new nation in a co,nception of "higher law" that is itself based on
both classical ~tufallaw and biblical religion. The third is an appeal
to "the Suprerile Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions," and the last indicates "a firm reliance on the protection of
divine Providence.'' In these last two references, a biblical God of
history who stands in judgment over the world is indicated.
The intimate relation of these religious notions with the self·
conception of the new republic is indicated by the'" frequency of ·
their appearance in early oflidal documents. For example, we find
in Washington's first inaugural address of April 30, 1789:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my
fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the uni·
..~ verse, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose pro~idential
aids can supply every· defect, that His benediction may consecrate to
the libetiies and happiness of the people of the United States a Govern·
ment instituted·· by themselves for these essential purposes,· and may
enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute ,with
success the functions allotted to his charge.
·
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand
which conducts the> affairs of man inore than those of the United States.
Every step by which we have advanced to ltte character of an independent nation •seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agencyI •..
. The propitious siniles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation
that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself
has ordained. . • • The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the
· ' destiny of ··the republican · model of government are · justly· ·considered,
perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the
hands of the American people.
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The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first
few presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it
has been maintained ever since. Though much is selectively derived
from Christianity, this religion is clearly not itself Christianity. For
one thing, neither Washington nor Adams nor Jefferson mentions
Christ in his inaugural address; nor do any of the subsequent presi·
dents, although not one of them fails to mention God. 1 The God of
the civil religion is not only rather '"unitarian," he is also on the aus·
tere side, much more related to order, law, and right than to salva·
tion and Jove. Even though he is somewhat deist in cast, he is by no
means simply a watchmaker God. He is actively interested and in·
volved in history, with a special concern for America. Here the
analogy has much less to do with natural Jaw than with ancient Israel;
the equation of America with Israel in the idea of the "AmeriC\n
Israel" is not infrequent.• What was implicit in the words of Wa!ihing·
ton already quoted becomes explicit in Jefferson's second inaugural
when he said: "I shall need, too, the favor of that Bein,~t in who~e
hands we arc, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native
land and planted them in a country flowing with aU the necessaries
and comforts of life." Europe is Egypt; America, the promised land.
God has Jed his people to establish a new sort of social order that
·shall be a light unto all the nations. 11
This theme, too, has been a continuous one in the civil religion.
\Ve have already alluded to it in the case of the Kennedy inaugural.
\Ve find it again in President Johnson's inaugural address:
They came here-the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened-to
find a· place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant
with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union,
it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds
us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.
Nor did these religious sentim~ts remain merely the personal ex-·.
pression of the President. At the request of both Houses of Congress, Washington proclaimed on October 3 of.that same first year
as Pr~sident that November 26 should be "a day of public thanksgiving and prayer," the first Thanksgiving Day under the Constitution.
What we have,. then, from the earliest years of the republic is a
collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things
and institutionalized in a collectivity. This religion--there seems no
other word for it-while not antithetical to and indeed sharing
much in common with Christianity, was neither sectarian nor in
any specific sense Christian. At a time when the society was over·
whelmingly Christian, it seems unlikely that this lack of CJ1ri~tian
reference was meant to spare the feelings of the tiny non-Christian
minority. Rather, the dvil religion expressed what those who set the
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r-------~~~--------------~--------~--~------------------------------------precedents felt was appropriate under the ciraunstances•. It reflected
their private as well as public views. Nor was the civU religion
simply "religion in general." While generality was undoubtedly
seen as a virtue by some, as in the quotation from Franklin above,
the civil religion was specific enough when it came to the topic
of America. Precise~y because of ~his specificity, the civil religion
was saved from f!mpty formalism and several as a genuine vehicle of
national religi06s self-understanding.
But the civil religion was not, in the minds of Franklin, Washington,. Jefferson, or other leaders, with the exception of a few radicals like Tom Paine, ever felt to be a substitute for Christianity.
There was an implicit but quite clear division of function between the
civil religion and Christianity. Under the doctrine of religious liberty,
an exceptionally wide sphere of personal piety and voluntary social
action was left to the dlurches. But the churches were neither to
control the state nor to be controlled by it. The national magistrate,
whatever his private religious views, operates under the rubria .of the
civil religion as long as he is in his official capacity, as we have
·llready seen in the case of Kennedy. This accommodation was. un1 ~.
doubt~dly the product of a particular historical moment and of a
cultura1 backgro~d dominated by Protestantism of several· varieties
1
and by;. the Enlightenment, but it has survived despite subsequent
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changes in the cultural and religious climate.
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Civil War and· Civil Religion
Until the Ci~il War, the American civil religion focused above
· all on the even~ of the Revolution, which was seen as the final act of
the Exodus from the old lands aaoss the waters. The Declaration
of Independence and ·the Constitution were the sacred scriptures .
and Washington the divinely appointed Moses who led his people
out of the hands of tyranny. The Civil War, which Sidney Mead
calls "the center of American history,"• was the second great event
that involved the national self-understanding so deeply as to require
expression in the civil religion. In ·183,, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote
that the American republic had never really been tried and that victory
, in the Revolutionary War was more the result ofBritish preoccupation elsewhere and the presence of a powerful ally than of any great
·military success of the Americans; But in 1861 the time of testing
had indeed come. Not only did the Civil War1have the tragi~ inten176
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sity of fratricidal strife, but it was one of the bloodiest wars of the
nineteenth century; the loss of life was far greater than any pre·
viously suffered by Americans.
The Civil War raised the deepest questions of national meaning.
The man who not. only formulated but in his own person embodied
its meaning for Americans was Abraham Lincoln. For him the issue
was not in the first instance slavery but "whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure." He had said
in Independence Hall in Philadelphia on February 22, 1861 :
All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I
have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in
and were given to the world from this Hall. I have never had a fcclin~.
politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the
Declaration of Independence.'
The phrases of Jefferson constantly echo in Lincoln's spceche!'. Hi~
task was, first of all, to save the Union-not for America alone but
for the meaning of America to the whole world so unforgettably
etched in the last phrase of the Getty5burg Address.
But inevitably the issue of slavery as the deeper cause of the
conflict had to be faced. In his second inaugural, Lincoln related
slavery and the war in an ultimate perspective:
If we shall suppose that .American slavery is one of those offenses which,
in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having .continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that
He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to
those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure
from th~se divine attributes which the believers in a Jiving Gotl alwa)'S
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and
fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the
judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
But he doses on a note if not of redemption then of reconciliation"With malice toward none, with charity for all."
With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice, and rchirth
enters the civil religion. It is symbolized in the life and death of
Lincoln. Nowhere is it stated more vividly than in the Gettysburg
Address, itself part of the Lincolnian "New Testament" among the
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. z wcw a ea. a
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~iptures.
Robert Lowell has recently pointed out the "in·
sistent use of birth images" in this speech explicitly devoted to "these .
honored dead": "brought forth," "conceived," "created," "a new
· birth of freedom." He goes ort to say:
civil
The Gettysburg Addtess is a symbolic and sacramental act. · Its verbal
quality is resonance,;-t:ombined with ·a logical, matter of fact, prosaic
brevity•... ln.)ds words, Lincoln symbolically died, just as the Union
soldiers really ··died-and as he himself was soon really to die. By his
words, he gave th~ field oE battle a symbolic •significance that it had
lacked. For us ~nd
country, he left Jefferson s ideals of freedom and
··· · equality joined to the Olristian sacrificial act of death and rebirth. I
believe this is a meaning that goes beyond sect or reUgio,!l and beyond .
peace and war, and is now part of our lives as a challen8e, obstacle and
our
hope.•.
· Lowell is certainly right lin pointing out the Christian quality oE the
symbolism here, but he is also right· in quickly disavowing any sec·
tarian implication. The earlier symbolism of the civil ·religion had
been Hebraic without in any specific sense being Jewish. The qettys·
_. burg symbolism ( ". • • those who here gave their lives, that t~t
: · nation ·might live") is Christian without having anything to. do wtth
the Christian church.
The symboli~ equation of Lincoln with Jesus was made relatively
early. W. H. Herndon, who had been Lincoln's law partner, wrote:
For fifty years God rolled Abraham Lincoln through his fiery furnace. He
did it to try Abraham and to purir{him for his purpo~es. TIUs made Mr.
IJncoln humble, 1 tender, forbearing, sympathetic to su1fering, kind, sensitive, tolerant; J:,roadening, deepening and widening his whole nature;
making him the; noblest ~d loveliest character since Jesus Christ.••• I
believe that Lincoln was God's chosen one.•
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With ·-the ··.Christian archetype. in the . background, ·Lincoln, Itour.
martyred president," was linked to the war dead, those who "gave
the last full measure of devotion." The theme of sacrifice was in·
delibly: written into the civil religi~n.
· The. new symbolism soon found both physical :tnd ritualistic ex·
pression. The great number of the war dead required the establishment of a number of national cemeteries. Of these, the. Gettysburg
National Cemetery, which Lincoln's famous address served to. dedicate, has been overshadowed only by the Arlington National Cemetery. Begun somewhat vindictively on the Lee ,estate aaoss tl;le river .
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from Washington, partly with the end that the Lee family could
never reclaim it, 10 it has subsequently become the most hallowed
monument of the civil religion. Not only was a section set aside
for the Confederate dead, but it has received the dead of each
. succeeding American war. It is the site of the one important new
symbol to come out of World War J, the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier; more recently it has become the site of the tomb of another
martyred President and .its symbolic eternal flame.
Memorial Day, which grew out of the Civil War, gave ritual ex·
pression to the themes we have been discussing. As Uoyd Warner
has so brilliantly analyzed it, the Memorial Day observance, especially
in the towns and smaller cities of America, is a m:~.jor event for
the whole community involving a rededication to the martrrcd dead,
to the spirit of sacrifice, and to the American vision. 11 Just as Thanks·
giving Day, which incidentally was securely institutionalized ns an
annual national holiday only under the presidency of J.incoln,
serves to integrate the fllmily into the civil religion, so Memorial
Day has acted to integrate the local community into the national
cult. Together with the less overtly religious Fourth of July :uul the
more minor celebrations of Veterans Day and the birthdays of
\Vashington and Lincoln, these two holidars pwvide an annual ritual
calendar for the civil religion. The public school system scrvcc; as a
particularly important context for the cultic celebration of the civil
rituals.
The Civil Religion Today
In reifying and giving a name to something that, though perva·
sive enough when you look at it, has gone on only semiconsciously,
there is risk of severely distorting the data. But the reification and the
naming have already begun. The religious critics of "religion in gen·
eral," or of the "religion· '(if the 'American \Vay of Life,'" ot of
"American Shinto" ha~e really been talking about the civil religion.
As usual in religious polemic, they take as criteria the best in their
own religious tradition and as typical the worst in the tradition of
the civil religion. Against these critics, I would argue that the civil
religion at its best is a genuine apprehension of universal and tr:~n·
scendent religious reality as seen in or, one could almost say, as
revealed through the eXperience of the American people. Like all
religions, it has suffered various deformations and demonic distor·
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causes. On the domestic scene, an American-Legion type of ideol· ·
ogy that fuses God, country, and flag has been used to attack non·
conformist and liberal ideas and groups of all kinds. Still, it has
been difficult to use the words of Jefferson and Lincoln to support
special interests and undermine personal freedom. The defenders
of slavery before the Civil War came to reject the thinking of the
Decla~tiqn of Indepdtdence. Some of the most consistent. of them
turned against not" only Jeffersonian democracy but Reformation
religion; they dieamed of a South dominated by medieval chivalry
·.and divine-right monarchy. 11 For all the overt religiosity of the radi·
cal right· today, their relation to the civil religious consensus is
't tenuous, as when the John Birch Society attacks the central American
symbol of Democracy itself.
. ,With respect to America's role in the world, the dangers of dis·
tortion are greater and the built-in safeguards of the tradition
weaker. The theme of the American Israel was used, almost from
the beginning, as a justification for the shameful treatment of the
Indians so characteristic of our history. It can be overtly or implicitly
linked to the idea of manifest destiny that has been used to legitimate
-several a~~entures in imperialism since the early nine~eenth. century.
1
Never has· the danger been greater than today. The 1ssue 1s not so
much one of imperial expansion, of which we are accused, as of
the tendency to assimilate all governments or parties in the world
that suppPrt our immediate policies or call upon our help by invoking
the notion of free ~titutions and democratic values. Those nations
that are (or the moment "on our side" become "the free world." A
repressive and unstable military dictatorship in South Vietnam
becomes ~'the fr~ people of South Vietnam and their government."
It is then, part of the role of America as the New Jerusalem and "the
last best hope of earth" to defend such governments with treasure
and eyenqially with bl09d. _When o~r ~oldiers are act\Ja_Uy dying, it
becomes possible to consecrate the struggle further by invoking the
great theme of sacrifice. For the majority of the American people
who are unable to judge whether the people in South Vietnam
(or wherever) are "free like us," ~uch arguments are convincing.
Fortunately President Johnson has been less ready to assert that "God
has favored our undertaking" in the case of Vietnam than with
respect to civil rights. But others are not so hesitant._ The civil religion
haS exercised long-term pressure for the humane solution of our
greatest domestic problem, the treatment of the Negro American.
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It remains to be seen how relevant it can become for our role in
the world at large, and whether we can effectually stand for "the
revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought," in John F.
Kennedy's word!!.
The civil religion is obviously involved in the most pressing moral
and political issues of the day. But it is also caught in another kind
of crisis, theoretical and theological, of which it is at the moment
largely unaware. "God" has dearly been a central symbol in the
civil religion from the beginning and remains so today. This symbol
is just as central to the civil religion as it is to Judaism or Christianity.
In the late eighteenth century this posed no problem; even Tom
Paine, contrary to his detractors, was not an atheist. From left to
right and regardless of church or sect, all could accept the idea of
God. But today, a.c; even Time has recognized, the meaning of "God"
is by no means so dear or so obvious. There is no formal erect! in the
civil religion. We have had a Catholic president; it is conceivahle
that we could have a Jewish one. But could we have an agnostic
president? Could a man with conscientious scruples about using the
word "God" the way Kennedy and Johnson ha\'e used it be elected
chief magistrate of our country? If the whole God symbolism rc·
quires reformulation, there will be obvious consequences for the
civil religion, consequences perhaps of liberal alienation nnd of
fundamentalist ossification that have not so far been prominent in
this realm. The civil religion has been a point of articulation be·
tween the profoundest commitments of the Western religious nnd
philosophical tradition and the common beliefs of ordinary Ameri·
cans. It ~s not too soon to consider how the deepening theological
crisis may affect the future of this articulation.
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The Third Time of Trial
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In conclusion it may be worthwhile to relate the civU religion to
the most serious situation that we as Americans now face, what I
call the third time of trial. The first time of trial had to do with the
question of independence, whether we should or could run our own
affairs in our own way. The second time of lrial was over the issue
of slavery, which in tum was only the most salient a.c;pect of the
more general problem of the full instilutionalization of democracy
within our country. This second problem we are still far from solving
though we have some notable successes to our credit. But we have
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.· been o~ertaken by a third great problem that has led to i third
Breat crisis, in the midst of which we stand. This is the problem of
responsible action in a revolutionary world, a world seeking to attain
many of the things, material add spiritual, that we have ali·eady at·
tained. Americans have, from the beginning, been aware of the re· .
sponsibility and the ~ignificance our republican experiment has for
the whole world._,nie first internal political polariution in the new
nation had to ,do with our attitude toward the French Revolution.
But we were small and weak then, and "foreign entanglements"
seemed •to threaten· our very survival. During the last century, our
relevance for the world was not forgotten, but our role was seen as
purely exemplary. Our democratic republic rebuked tyran~ny by merely
existing. Just after World War I we were on the brink of taking a
different role in the world, but once again we turned our backs.
Since· World War II tlle old pattern has become impossible. Every
president since Franklin Roosevelt has been groping toward a new
pattern of action in the world, one that would be consonant with
our power and our responsibilities. For Truman and for the period
· ·dominated by John Foster Dulles that pattern was seen. to be the
:-. great MllJlichaean confrontation of East and West, the confronta·
tion of democracy and "the false philosophy of Communism" that
provided the structure of Truman's inaugural address. But with the
last years of Eisenhower and with the successive two presidents, the
pattern began to shift. The great problems came to be seen as caused
not solely by the ev.il intent of any one group of men, but as stem·
minB from much more complex and multiple sources. For Kennedy
it was not so ~uch a struggle against particular men as against
"the common ~nemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war
·" . itself."
But in the midst of this trend toward a less primitive conception ..
of ourselves and our world, we have somehow, without anyone really
intending it, stumbled into a military confrontation where we have
come to feel that our honor is at stake. We have in a moment of un·
certaintY been tempted to rely on our overwhelming physical power
rather than on our intelligence, and we have, in part, succumbed
to this temptation. Bewildered and unnerved when our terrible
power fails to bring immediate success, we ate at the edge of a
, chasm the depth of which no man knows.
.·
· I cannot help but think of Robinson Jeffers, whose poetry seems
more apt now that when it was written, when he said:
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Unhappy country, what wings you have! • • •
Weep (it is frequent in human affairs), weep for
the terrible magnificence of the means,
.
The ridiculous incompetence of the reasons, the
bloody and shabby
Pathos o( the result.
•
But as so often before in similar times, we have a man of prophetic
stature, without the bitterness or misanthropy of Jeffers, who, as
Lincoln before him, calls this nation to its judgment:
When a nation is very powerful but lacking In self-confidence, it is likely
to behave in a manner that is dangerous both to itself and to others.
Gradually but unmistakably, America is succumbing to that arrogance
of power which has afflicted, weakened ancl in some cases destroyed
great nations in the past.
If the war goes on and expands, if that fatal process continues to
accelerate until America becomes what it is not now and never has been,
a seeker after unlimited pawer and empire, then Vietnam will have had
a mighty and tragic fallout indeed.
·
I do not believe that will happen. I am ''cry apprehensive but J still
remain hopeful, and even confident, that America, with its humane an,f
democratic traditions, will find the wisdom to match its po'\\·er. 10
· Without an awareness that our nation stands under higher jud~t·
ment, the tradition of the civil religion would be dangerous ·indeed.
Fortunately, the prophetic voices have never been Jacking. Our
present situation brings to mind the Mexican-American war that
Lincoln, among so many others, opposed. The spirit of civil disobc·
dience that is alive today in the civil rights movement and the oppo·
sition to the Vietnam War was already clearly outlined by Henry
David Thoreau when he. wrote, "If the law is of such a nature that it
requires you to be an agent of injustice to another, then I say, break
the law." Thoreau's words, "I would remind my countrymen that
they are men first, and Americans at a late and convenient hour," 20
provide an essential standard for any adequate thought and action
in our third time of trial. As Americans, we have been well favored ·
in the world, but it is as men that we will be judged.
Out of the first and second times of trial have come, as we have
seen, the major symbols of the American civil religion. There seems
little doubt that a successful negotiation of this third time of trial~
the attainment of some kind of viable and coherent worJd orderwould precipitate a major new set of symbolic forms. So far the
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fticker~g flame of. the United Nations bums too low .to be the foc:uS
of a cult,_ but ·the emergence of a genuine transnatioDal sov~snty
would certainly change this. It would necessitate the· it.icoiporation
of vital international symbolism' into our civil religion~ or~ perhaps a
better way of putting it, it would result in American civil religion
. becoming simply one part of a new. civil religion of the. world. _It is
useless to s~te·'On the form such a civil religion might take,
though it obvia6sly would draw on religious traditions beyond the
sphere of biblical religion alone. Fortunately, since the American
civil religion is; not· the worship of the American nation but an un·
derstan~ing of the American experience in the light of ultimate and
universal reality, the reorganization entailed by such a new situation
need not disrupt the American civil religion's continufty. A world
civil reUgion could be accepted as a fulfillment and not as a denial
of American civil religion. Indeed, such an outcome has been the
eschatological hope of American civil religion from ·the beginning.
To deny such an outcome would be to deny the meaning of America
itself.
,-. Behitld.· the civil religion at every point lie biblical archetypes:
Exodus, Chosen feople, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth. But it is also genuinely American and gen·
uinely new. It has its own prophets and its own martyrs, its oWn
sacred events and sacred places, its own solemn rituals and symbols.
It is concerned that :America be a society as perfectly in accord with
the will of God as men can make it, and a light to all the nations.
It has often been used and is being used today as a cloak for
petty iqterests ~d ugly passions. It is in need-as is any living faith
-{Jf continual reformation, of being measured by univerSal standards. But it is not evident that it is incapable of growth and new in· .·
sight.·
. .. ,. ·
It does not make any decision for us. It does not remove us from
moral ambiguity, from being, in Lincoln's fine phrase, an "almost
chosen people." But it is 11. heritage of moral and religious experi·
ence from which we still have much to learn as we formulate the
decisions that lie ahead.
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NOTES
1 \Vhy something so obvious should have escaped serious analytical
attention is in itself an interesting problem. Part of the reason is probably the controversial nature of··the subject. From the earliest years of the
nineteenth century, conservative religious and political groups have argued
that Christianity is, in fact, the national religion. Some of them have ·
from time to time and as ·recently as the 1950s proposed constitutional
amendments that would explicitly recognize the sovereignty of Ouist.
In defending the doctrine of separation of church and state, opponent!
of such groups have denied that the national polity has, intrinsically, any.
thing to do with religion at all. The moderates on this issue have in·
sisted that the American state ha.<~ taken a permissive and indeed s~p·
portive attitude toward religious groups (tax exemption, et cetera), thus
favoring religion but still missing the positive institutionalization. with
which I am concerned. But part of the reason this issue has been left in
obscurity is certainly due to the peculiarly Western concept of "rdi,r.ion"
as denoting a single type of collectivity of which an individual cail he a
membe~ of one and only one at a time. The Durkheimian notion that
every group has a religious dimension, which would be seen as obvious
in southern or eastern Asia, is foreign to us. This obscures the recogni·
tion of such dimensions in our society.
2 Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Will Herberg, Proleslttni-Catholk·Jew
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., t9n), p. 97. .
3 God is mentioned or referred to in all inaugural addreues but
Washington's second, which. is a very brief (two paragraphs) and per-.
functory acknowledgment. If is not without interest that the actual word
"God" does not appear until Monroe's second inaugural, March !J, 1821.
In his first inaugural, Washington refers to God as "that Almighty Being
who rules the universe," "Great Author of every public and private
good," "Invisible Hand," and "benign Pa~ent of the Human Race." John
Adams refers to God as "Providence," "Being who is supreme over all,"
"Patron of Order," "Fountain of Justice," and "Protector in all ages
of the world of virtUous liberty." Jefferson speaks of "that Infinite Power
which mles the destinies of the unh·erse," and "that Being in who~e
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hands we are." Madison· speaks of "that Almighty Being whosO. power
regulat~ the destiny of nations," and "Heaven." Monroe: uses.."Provi·
dence" and "the Almighty" in his first inaugural and finallf:~'Almighty
God" in his second. See lnttugurlfl Addresses of the Prisidmls of the
United Slates from George W t~~hlnglon 1789 lo Htt"1 S. Truman 1949,
82d Congress, 2d Session, House Document No. 540, 1952.
4 For example, ~biel Abbot, pastor of the First Church in Haverhill,
Massachusetts, deUYcired a Thanksgiving sermon in 1799, Trails of Resemblt~t~ce in tJfe People of the United Slates of America lo Ancient
Israel, in which he said, "It has been often remarked that the people. of
the United States cdme nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any
other nation upon the globe. Hence 'Our American Israel' is a term
frequently used; and common consent allows it . apt and proper." In
Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationttlism (New York: ~llan Co.,
.
·
1961), p. 665.
.
' That the Mosaic analogy was present in the minds. of leaders at
· the very moment of the birth of the republic is indicated in the designs
; proposed by Franklin and Jefferson for a seal of the p~ite4. States of
. ' · America. Together with Adams, they formed a comnuttee .. of three
delegated by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776,)o_.diaW up the
· iiew device. "Franklin proposed as the device Moses l~f~ng 1 up;his 'wand
,-.- and divjding the Red Sea while Pharaoh was overwhelmed. by, its waters,
· with ~ · motto .'Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to~;,q<>d.' jefferson
proposed the children of Israel in the wilderness 'Jed by .a cloud by day
and a pillar of fire at night.' " Anson Phelps Stokes, Church ttnd Slate
in the United Slttles, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Co.~ 1950); pp. 46768.
6 Sidney E. MeaJ, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper &
Row, 1963), p. ~2.
·
7 Abraham Lincoln, in Allan Nevins, ed., Lincoln ttnd the Ge111s·
burg Addreu (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Ill. Press, 1964), p. 39. .
8 Robert Lowell, in ibid., "On the Gettysburg Address," Jip. 8~9.
9 William Henry Herndon, in Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of ·
God ttnd the Americttn Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), p.
162.
10 KllCI Decker and Angus McSween, Historic Arlington (Washing·
ton, D.C., 1892), pp, 60-67.
.
·
11 How extensive the activity assbciated with Memorial Day can be
is indicated by Warner: "The sacred symbolic behavior of Memorial
Day, in which scores of the town's organizations are involved, is
ordinarily divided into four periods. During the yeat separate rituals are
held by many of. the associations for their dead, and many of these
activities are connected with later Memorial Day .events. In the second
phase, preparations are made dwing the last thr~· or four weeks,for the
ceremony itself, and some of the associations pe~form public rituals. The
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third phase consists of scores of rituals held in all the cemeteries,
churches, and halls of the associations.. These rituals consist of speeches
and highly ritualized behavior. They last for two days and are climaxed
by the fourth and last phase, in which all the separate celebrants Bather
in the center of the business district on the afternoon of Memorial Day.
The separate org~izations, with their members in uniform or with
fitting insignia, march through the town, visit. the shrines and monu·
ments of the hero dead, and, finally, enter the cemetery. Here dozens of .
ceremonies are held, most of them highly symbolic and formalized."
During these various ·~nies · Lincoln is continually referred to and
the Gettysburg Address recited many times. W, Lloyd Warner, Ameriran
Life (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 8-9.
12 Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Religion of Abraham Lincoln," in Nc,·ins,
ed., op. cit., p. 72. William J. Wolfe of the Episcopal Theological School
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has written: "Lincoln is one of the ~reatest
thcolo~::ians of America-not in the technical meaning of producing a
system of doctrine, certainly not as the defender of some one denomina· ·
tion, but in the sense of ~ing. the hand of God intimately in the affairs
of nations. Just so the prophets of Israel criticized the C\'ents of their
day from the perspective of the God who is concerned_ for history and
who reveals His will within it. Lincoln now stands among God's latter·
day prophets." The R.lligion of Abraham Li11coln (New York, 1963 )i
~K
.
13 Seymour Martin Upset, "Religion and American Values" in Tht'
Finl New Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1964), chap. 4. ·
.
14 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democrttcy in Amerirtt, vol. 1 (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1954), p. 310.
.
15 Henry Bargy, La Religion dans Ia Sodetl ttiiX Slttls-U11is (Paris,
1902),p. 31.
..
16 De Tocqueville, op. tit.,· p. 311. Later he says, "In the United
States even the religion of most of the citizens is republican, since it
submits the truths of the other world to rrivate judgment, as in politics
the care of their temporal-interests is abandoned to the good sense of the
people. Thus every man. is allowed freely to take that .road which he
thinks will lead him to heaven, just as the law permits every citizen to
.
have the right of choosing his own government" (p. 436}.
J 7 Lyndon B. Johnso.n,
U.S., Congreuional Retord, House, March
J.
15, 1965,pp.4924,4926.
in
.
.
18 See Louis Hartz, "The Feudal Dream of the South," pt. 4, Tht'
Lihera/ Tradition in Amerirtt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955).
19 Senator J. William Fulbright, speech of April 28, 1966, as re·
ported in The Netu York Times, April 29, 1966.
20 Henry David Thoreau, In Yehoshua Arieli, lndividuttlism and
Nationalism in Americttn ldeolog1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Pre~s. 1964), p. 274.
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CIVIL RBLIGION·IN AMERICA
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IN WORDS
Presidential Rhetoric and.
the Genres of Governance
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Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
and Kathleen Hall Jamieson
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Similar statements appear in many others. John Quincy Adams said:
"I appear, my fellow citizens, in your presence and in that of heaven to
bind myself .. -." (29). "'n the presence of this vast assemblage of my
countrymen," said Cleveland, "I am about to supplement and seal by
the oath which I have taken the manifestation of the will of a great
and free people" (91). "1, too, am a witness," noted Eisenhower, "today
testifying in your name to the principles and purposes to which we, as
a people, are pledged" (162). Lincoln and McKinley made similar comments (72, 103).
Without the presence of the people, the rite of presidential investiture cannot be completed. The people ratify the president's formal
ascent to power by acknowledging the oath taking, witnessing the enactment of the presidential role, and accepting the principles laid
down to guide an administration. Benjamin Harrison recognized the
interdependence of the president and the people in his inaugural:
The oath taken in the presence ofthe people becomes a mutual
covenant.... My promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not
the less real and solemn. The people of every State have here
their representatives. Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit of
the occasion when I assume that the whole body of the people
covenant with me and with each other today to support and
defend the Constitution ofthe Union ofthe States, to yield willing obedience to all the laws and each to every other citizen his
[sic] equal civil and political rights. (94)
Great inaugurals reenact the original process by which the people
and their leaders "form a more perfect union."13 In recreating this
mutual covenant, great inaugurals both reconstitute the audience as
the people and constitute the citizenry as a people in some new way:
as those entrusted with the success or failure of the democratic experiment (Washington's first), as members of a perpetual Union
(Lincoln's first), as a people whose spiritual strength can overcome
material difficulties (Franklin Roosevelt's first), as a people willing to
sacrifice for an ideal (Kennedy's), as members of an international
community (Wilson's second), as a people able to transcend political
differences (Washington's first, Jefferson's first). In 1865, for instance,
Lincoln reconstituted the people as limited by the purposes of the Almighty and urged the audience to consider God's view of the conflict
between North and South: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the
same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The
prayers of both could not be answered. Those of neither have been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes" (77). 14 In 1913, in
his first inaugural, Wilson reconstituted the citizenry as a people ca-
�CHAPTER 1\vo
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pable of counting the costs of industrial development: "We have been
proud of our industrial achievement, but we have not hitherto
stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost.... We have
come now to the sober second thought" (123-24). In 1961, Kennedy
went beyond a call for sacrifice to speak of "a call to bear the burden of
a long twilight struggle, year in, and year out" (166), a call that suggested Gotterrdammerung and denied easy victory or inevitable
triumph. 15 Notably, the great inaugurals dramatically illustrate the
processes of change within a continuous tradition. In them, the resources of epideictic ritual are yoked to political renewal.
Ceremonially, the inaugural address is an adjunct to or an extension of the oath of office, a relationship demonstrated dramatically in
the shortest address, Washington's second. After describing himself
as "called upon by the voice of my country" to "this distinguished
honor," Washington intensified the constitutional oath with a second
pledge:
Previous to the execution of any official act of the President,
the Constitution requires an oath of'office. This oath I am now
about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found
during my administration of the Government I have in any
instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions
thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment)
be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of
the present solemn ceremony. (3)
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Although it consists entirely of an avowal ofhis personal commitment
to the constitutional oath, this inaugural also recognized the witnessing role of the audience in the rite of investiture.
That an inaugural address is an extension of the oath of office is
certified by many of these speeches. Cleveland, for example, referred
to his speech as a supplement to the oath of office (91). Lyndon Johnson said: "The oath I have taken before you and before God is not mine
alone, but ours together" (167). One of the more eloquent inaugurals
derived its power in part from its construction as an extension of the
oath of office and as an invitation to participate in a mutual covenant.
In 1961, each assertion or promise articulated by Kennedy was
phrased as a pledge jointly made by leader and people. His litany of
mutual pledges culminated in the claim: "In your bands, my fellow ·
citizens, more than mine, will rest the fmal success or failure of our
course." Finally, he explicitly invited audience participation by asking: "Will you join in that historic effort?" (166). By casting his speech
as an extension of the oath of office and by inviting the audience to
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join him in these avowals, Kennedy underscored the ritualistic
nature of the occasion.
The force of Lincoln's first inaugural, discussed in more detail below, also derived, in part, from his call for audience participation. In
1881, James Garfield made an appeal that echoed the famous words of
Lincoln's first inaugural:
My countrymen [sic], we do not now di11'er in our judgment
concerning the controversies of past generations, and fifty
years hence our children will not be divided in their opinions
concerning our controversies. They will surely bless their fathers and their fathers' God that the Union was preserved,
that slavery was overthrown, and that both races were made
equal before the law. We may hasten or we may retard, but we
can not prevent, the final reconciliation. Is it not possible for
us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict? (88)
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The next task the new president faces is that of reaffinning traditional values. Because each of the elements fonning a presidential
inaugural ought to facilitate the president's task of unifying the audience as the people, the traditional values rehearsed by the
president need to be selected and framed in ways that unify the audience. Thus, for example, following a campaign replete with charges
that he was an atheist, Jefferson's speech assured former adversaries
that he recognized the power of the deity, by "acknowledging and
adoring an overruling Providence, ... that Infinite Power which
rules the destinies of the universe" (9-10). Similarly, the founders
were eulogized in early inaugurals, but such encomia disappeared as
the Civil War approached. Because William Lloyd Garrison and other
abolitionists had widely publicized the founders' slaveholding, public
veneration of them would ally a president with those who favored
slavery and invite the enmity of its opponents.16 Van Buren's exceptional reference in 1837 to Washington and the other founders can be
explained by his continuing need to reassure southerners about what
had been the central issue of the campaign, whether he was secretly
an abolitionist (37).17 The point to be noted is that when an appeal
that was once a unifying recollection of past heroes interferes with
the process. of reconstituting the audience as a unified people, it is
abandoned.
In order to be invested, presidents must demonstrate their qualifications for office by venerating the past and showing that the
traditions of the institution continue unbroken in them. They must
affirm that they will transmit the institution intact to their sue-
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cessors. Consequently, the lang\.tage of conservation, preservati
maintenance, and renewal pervades these· speeches. What we c
serve and renew is often sanctified as our "creed," our "faith," or
"sacred trust." Cleveland's statement in 1885 is illustrative:
On this auspicious occasion we may well renew the pledge of
our devotion to the Constitution, which, launched by the
founders of the republic and consecrated by their prayers and
patriotic devotion, has for almost a century borne the hopes
and aspirations of a great people through prosperity and
peace and through the shock of foreign conflicts and the perils
· of domestic strife and vicissitudes. (91)
Presidential use ofthe principles, policies, and presidencies oft
past suggests that, in the inaugural address, memoria, or shared r
ollection, is a key source of inventio, the development of lines
argument. The final appeal in Lincoln's first inaugural to "the mys
chords of memory" illustrates the symbolic force of a shared pa
Coolidge put it more simply: "We can not continue these brilliant s~
cesses in the future, unless we continue to learn from the past" (13
Such use of the past is also consistent with the ritualistic process
re-presenting beginnings, origins, and universal relationships.
The past is conserved by honoring past presidents. Washington .,..
praised by John and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson; Taylor, and V
Buren; Monroe and Jackson referred to their illustrious predec'
sors; Lincoln spoke of the distinguished citizens who had admin
tered the executive branch. The past is also conserved by reaffirmi
the wisdom of past policies. Cleveland, for example, praised polici
of Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe (92). McKinley praised the p
icy, "wisely inaugurated by Washington," of "keeping ourselves fr
from entanglement, either as allies or foes" (106).
In 1809, in the sixth inaugural, Madison said: "Unwilling to depr
from examples ofthe most revered authority, I avail myselfofthe c
casion now presented to express the profound impression made on r
by the call of my country" (14). Eight years later, James Monroe sai
•
In commencing the duties of the chief executive office it has
been the practice of the distinguished men who have gone before me to explain the principles which would govern them in
their respective Administrations. In following their venerated example .... (18)
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Over time, earlier presidential inaugurals have frequently be
quoted, especially those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, a.
Franklin Roosevelt. This process of rhetorical introversion illun
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nates some remarkable coincidences. Harding and Carter, for
example, quoted the same verse from Micah. Franklin Roosevelt and
Carter each quoted a former teacher, Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy had rendezvous with destiny, Reagan paraphrased Jefferson,
Nixon paraphrased Kennedy, Kennedy echoed Lincoln, Polk rephrased Jackson, and Reagan echoed Kennedy. In other words,
presidents recognize, capitalize on, and are constrained by the inaugurals of their predecessors, which, taken together, form a tradition.
The past is also used analogically to affirm that as we overcame difficulties in the past, so will we now; the venerated past assures us
that the nation has a future. Thus, in 1933, in the face of severe economic problems, Franklin Roosevelt said: "Compared with the perils
which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not
afraid, we have still much to be thankful for" (145). In 1941, with another crisis looming, he reminded his audience of the difficult tasks
that confronted Washington and Lincoln (151).
In the world of inaugural addresses, we have inherited our character as a people; accordingly, veneration of the past not only unifies
the audience but also warrants present and future action, as recurring references to avoiding "entangling alliances" have illustrated. A
more recent example is found in the 1981 inaugural, in which Reagan
paraphrased a statement Jefferson made in 1801.18 Jefferson said:
"Sometimes it is said that man [sic] can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of
others?" (8). Reagan said: "Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself [sic], then who among us has the capacity to govern
someone else?" (180).
The third job ofeach president is to set forth the principles that will
guide the new administration. The incoming president must go beyond the rehearsal of traditional values and veneration of the past to
enunciate a political philosophy. Because rhetorical scholars have
focused on the specific political principles laid down in individual inaugurals, they often have failed to note that, although these
principles vary from inaugural to inaugural, all inaugurals not only
lay down political principles but also present and develop such principles in predictable ways.
In many inaugurals, presidents indicate that they feel obliged to
set forth the principles that will govern their tenures in office. Jefferson's explicit 1801 statement exemplified this:
About to enter, my fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties
which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is
proper you should understand what I deem the essential
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principles of our Government, and consequently those wr
ought to shape its Admiriistration. (9)
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In keeping with the epideictic character of inaugurals, howe\
cific policies are proposed for contemplation, not action. Propo,
not an end in themselves but illustrations of the political phii
of the speaker. This contemplative, expository function differe
policy proposals embedded in inaugurals from those in Statt
Union addresses, where such proposals are presented for c•
sional action.
So, for instance, in a relatively detailed statement of his p
views, James Polk discussed "our revenue laws and the levy of
but this discussion illustrated the political axiom that "no mor
ey shall be collected than the necessities of an economical admi
tion shall require" (57). Similarly, he aired his position on t
tional debt to illustrate the principle that
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melancholy is the condition of that people whose governmr
can be sustained only by a system which periodically transft
large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers oft
few. Such a system is incompatible with the ends for which c
Republican Government was instituted. (56-57)
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Because William Howard.Taft conceived the inaugural addrt
vehicle for ~ticulating relatively specific policy, ·his speech pro·
rigorous test of the claim that inaugurals deal with principles
than practices. He said: "The office ofan inaugural address is t(
summary outline ·of the main policies of the new administrat
far as they can be anticipated" (US), but his tedious list ofreco:
dations functioned not as a call for specific, immediate action,
evidence of continuity and ofloyalty to the Constitution. He s;·
example: "I have had the honor to be one of the advisers of n
tinguished predecessor, and as such, to hold up his hands
reforms he has initiated.... To render such reforms lasting
ever, ... further legislative and executive action are needed·
Such reforms ("the suppression of the lawlessness and abL
power of the great combinations of capital invested in railroads
industrial enterprises carrying on interstate commerce") we
fmed as means of maintaining the democratic character of th
ernment. Again, they became illustrations that he would follow
principles. 19
Just as recollection of the past and rehearsal of traditional
need to be noncontroversial and unifying, so recommitment t
stitutional principles unifies by assuring those who did not vot
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Inaugural Addresses
candidate that the president will, nonetheless, scrupulously protect
their rights. The same needs to unify the audience and to speak in the
epideictic present also influence the language in which presidents articulate the principles that will govern their administrations.
The rite of investiture demands that presidents do more than rehearse traditional values and enunciate a political philosophy. Their
fourth task is to enact the presidential role and in so doing demonstrate an appreciation of the requirements and limitations of the
executive in Qur system of gove~ent. The audience, unified as the
people, witnesses the investiture, but to complete and ratify the president's ascent to power, the inaugural address demonstrates rhetorically that this person can function as a leader within the constitutionally established limits of executive power and can perform the
public, symbolic role of president of all the people.
As president, the speaker appropriates the country's history and
assumes the right to say what that history means; as pre·sident, the
speaker asserts that some principles are more salient than others at
that moment; as president, the speaker constitutes hearers as the
people; and as president, the speaker asks the people to join in a mutual covenant to commit themselves to the political philosophy enunciated in the address.
If an inaugural address is to function as part of a rite of investiture,
presidents must speak in the public role of president. An inaugural
would not fulfill this function if the address pressed forward the personality or personal history of the incoming president. 20 When evidence is drawn from a president's personal past, it must reveal something about the presidency or about the people or the nation. Personal
narrative is inappropriate in a rhetorical genre designed for the formal display of the president as president. The functions of personal
material in an inaugural are clearly different from the functions of
like material in campaign oratory, where a high level of self-disclosure and self-aggrandizement is both expected and appropriate.
The functions of self-references also distinguish the inaugural address from other presidential rhetoric. 21
A dramatic example of inappropriate personal material appeared
in the final paragraph of Ulysses Grant's second inaugural. He concluded:
•
Throughout the war, and from my candidacy for my present
office in 1868 to the close of the last Presidential campaign,
I have been the object of abuse and slander scarcely ever
equalled in political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict, which I gratefully
accept as my vindication. (81)
23
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The statements speak of Grant the person, not of the presidency or
Grant the president. In so doing, the statement called into questic
Grant's ability to fulfill the symbolic role of president of all the peopl
More recently, Carter's use of a statement by a former teacher illu.
trates a potential pitfall in using personal material. Immediate l
after thanking Gerald Ford for all he had done to heal the division i
the nation, Carter began his speech by saying:
In this outward and physical ceremony, we attest once again
to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high
school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say, "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles." (178)
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As we have argued, the firSt duty of a president in an inaugural is t
reconstitute the audience as the people. Carter was attempting t
forge an American community out of his listeners. However, only cer
tain people have the standing to do that, and Julia Coleman, howeve
able she may have been as a high school teacher, was not one of them
Later in the inaugural, if Carter had made her the voice of the peoplt
expressing a timeless truth, Coleman's aphorism might have been ap
propriate. Later, despite Coleman's lack of authority, her adage migh ·
have served had it been an unusual, penetrating, immediately intel·
ligible, vivid statement of the relationship between change anc
continuity. However, even such a· claim is questionable. In Carter·~
statement, we have the rhetorical equivalent of what would have oc·
curred had Kennedy begun the second paragraph of his speech, "Tc
par~ phrase George St. John, my old headmaster, 'Ask not what your
country can do for you ....' "22
Franklin Roosevelt's firSt inaugural dramatically asserted presidential leadership and the special importance of executive action. He
spoke of "a leadership of frankness and vigor" and said: "I am convinced that you will again give the support to leadership in these
critical days" (145). "This Nation asks for action, and action now," and
"With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of
this great army of our people" (146). However, Roosevelt was aware
that he was pressing the limits of executive power. He said:
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented
demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend
the measures that a stricken nation ... may require.... I
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Inaugural Addresses
shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet
the crisis-broad Executive power to wage a war against the
emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if
we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. (147)
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What is crucial here is that Roosevelt portrayed his leadership as constitutional. Special powers would be conferred by Congress, and those
powers would be analogous to the extraordinary powers exercised by
previous presidents in similarly extreme circumstances.
An abiding fear of the misuse of executive power pervades our national history. Washington's opponents accused him of wanting to be
king; Jackson was called King Andrew, and Van Buren King Martin;
Teddy Roosevelt was attacked in cartoons captioned "Theodore Roosevelt for ever and ever"; Lincoln's abolition of habeas corpus and
Franklin Roosevelt's use of executive power as well as his pursuit of
third and fourth terms were damned as monarchical or, worse, as despotic. 2s The American Revolution was fought, the Declaration of
Independence reminds the citizenry, in response to "rePeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of
an absolute Tyranny over these States." To allay fears of incipient tyranny, incoming presidents must assure the people that they do not
covet power for its own sake and that they recognize and respect constitutional limits on executive authority.
There is a paradox in the demand that presidents demonstrate rhetorically a capacity for effective leadership while carefully acknowledging constitutional limitations. To the extent that they promise
strong leadership, they risk being seen as incipient tyrants. By contrast, should they emphasize the limits on executive power, they risk
being seen as an inept or enfeebled leaders. Eloquent presidents have
walked this tightrope with agility, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural
when he responded to the fear that he would use executive power to
abolish slavery: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere
with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists" (72). He
attested that this was a consistent posipon for him by citing statements from his campaign speeches and a plank from the Republican
party platform. This material he characterized as "the most conclusive evidence· of which the case is susceptible" (72). On the other
hand, responding to abolitionist revulsion against the fugitive slave
laws, he quoted Article 4 of the Constitution and averred that these
laws were merely an extension of that article, a part of the Constitution that he shortly would swear an oath to uphold.
In recognizing the limits on presidential power, inaugurals not only
atrum. the balance of power and locate executive initiatives in the
mandate of the people, they also offer evidence of humility. The new
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president humbly acknowledges deficiencies, humbly accept:
burdens of office, and humbly invokes God•s blessings. The precl
for evincing humility was set in the first inaugural when Washir
said:
The magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice c
my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wi~;;
est and most experienced ofher citizens a distrustful scrutin:
into his [sic] qualifications, could not but overwhelm wit!
despondence one who ought to be peculiarly conscious of hi
own deficiencies. (1)24
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Washington's attitude was echoed in Carter's less felicitous com;
in 1977: "Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and
wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes" (178).
As part of the process of acknowledging the limits of exect
power, inaugurals typically place the president and the nation u
God. These references to God are not perfunctory, because by ca
upon God, presidents subordinate themselves to a higher power.
God of the inaugurals is a personal God who is actively involvt
affairs of state, an "Almighty Being whose power regulates the d
ny of nations," in the words of Madison (15); a God "who led
fathers," according to Jefferson (13); a God who protects us, accor
to Monroe (28); a God revealed in our history, according to Cleve
(93); and a God who punishes us, in the words of Lincoln: "He giv
both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to tho!;
·whom the offense came" (77). Presidents enact the presidential
by placing themselves and the nation in God's hands. We should 1
however, that it is only after they are fully invested with office
presidents have claimed the authority to place the nation "u ·
God." For this reason, perhaps, prayers or prayerlike statements !
usually occurred near or at the end of inaugurals. This can ex}:
why Eisenhower called the prayer he delivered before his first il
gural "a private prayer." Although he had taken the oath of offict
was not yet fully invested as president, and until he had perfor
further rhetorical acts of acceptance, he sensed that he lacked thE
thority to represent the nation before God.
The placement of prayers or prayerlike statements is a subtle i
cation that the inaugural address is an integral part of the rit
investiture. Some inaugurals have articulated the notion that
president becomes "the president" through delivering the inaug
address. For example, William Henry Harrison concluded his ·
speech this way: "Fellow citizens, being fully invested with that t
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Inaugural Addresses
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office to which the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now
take aft'ectionate leave of you" (53).
Fifth, and finally, the four elements described above must be adapted to the character of epideictic rhetoric because the special "timelessness" of epideictic discourse is the key to fusing the elements that
symbolically constitute the presidential inaugural. The time of epideictic rhetoric, including inaugurals, is the eternal present, the
mythic time that Mircea Eliade calls illud tempus, time out of time.
Eliade writes: "Every ritual has the character of happening now, at
this very moment. The time of the event that the ritual commemorates or re-enacts is made present, 're-presented' so to speak, however
far back it may have been in ordinary reckoning."25 This time out of
time allows one to experience a universe of eternal relationships, in
the case of inauguration, the relationship between the ruler and the
ruled, and it has the potential to be reenacted, made present once
again, at any moment. This special sense of the present is central to
the generic character of the inaugural because the address is about an
institution and a form of government fashioned to transcend any
given historical moment. The timelessness of an inaugural address
affirms and ensures the continuity of the constitutional system and
the immortality of the presidency as an institution, and timelessness
is reflected in its contemplative tone and by the absence of calls to
specific and immediate action.
Inaugurals transcend the historical present by reconstituting an
existing community, rehearsing the past, aff"mning traditional values, and articulating timely and timeless principles that will govern
the administration of the incoming president. The quality of epideictic timelessness to which inaugurals aspire was captured by Franklin
Roosevelt in his 1941 address: "To us there has come a time, in the
midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock-to
recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we
are and what we may be" (151).
Great inaugurals achieve timelessness. They articulate a perspective that transcends the situation that produced them, and for this
reason they retain their rhetorical force. For instance, although Lincoln's first inaugural addressed a nation poised on the brink of civil
war, Lincoln's message speaks to all situations in which the rights of
constituent units are seen to clash with the powers of a central body.
Similarly, the eloquent conclusion of Lincoln's second inaugural remains applicable to the wounds the nation suffered in the conflict over
the war in Vietnam. Although Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural assured his hearers that they, as a people led by him, could surmount
27
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that economic crisis, it also assures audiences through time
Americans can surmount all material problems. Kennedy's inaug
reflected the history of the Cold War, but it also expressed the r
luteness required under any circumstances to sustain a stru
against a menacing ideology. Finally, George Washington's inaug
not only spoke to the immediate crisis but also articulated ""
Arthur Schlesinger calls "a great strand that binds them [the inat
rals] together."26 Washington said: "The preservation of the sa(
flre of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of governrr
are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as fmally staked on thl
periment intrusted to the hands of the American people" (2).
Inaugurals bespeak their locus in the eternal present in a r
style that heightens experience, invites contemplation, and speak
the people through time. The language of great inaugurals captt.
complex, resonant ideas in memorable phrases. Americans still re
Jefferson's "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nati·
entangling alliances with none" (9). They continue to quote Liner
conclusion:
I
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with flrmness
in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to
fl.nish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to
care for him who shall have borne the battle and· for his widow
and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting ;peace among ourselves and with all nations. (77)
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Franklin Roosevelt's "So, firSt of all, let me assert my flrm belief t:
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (145), and John Kenne<
"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do
you: Ask what you can do for your country" (166) remain memoral
Such phrases illustrate special rhetorical skill in reinvigorating t
ditional values; in them familiar ideas become fresh and take on n
meaning.
Stylistically and structurally, great presidential inaugurals ;
suited to contemplation. Through the use of parallelism, for examJ:
Kennedy revived our traditional commitment to the defense of fr.
dom when he said: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, m ·
any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to asst·
the survival and success of liberty" (165). The memorable antithe~
"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotia;
(166), was a vivid restatement of our modem tradition of relations}
to foreign nations. Kennedy's more famous antithesis asked citizl
to contemplate a redefmition of who they were as a people, a redefi.
tion based on sacrifl.ce. Through the use of assonance, Kenne
28
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Inaugural Addresses
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underscored the nuclear peril when he spoke of "the steady spread of
the deadly atom" (166). By arresting attention, such literary devices
invite listeners and readers to ponder these ideas, ideas less suited to
contemplation when stated in more mundane language. 27
The preceding analysis treats presidential inaugurals as one kind
of epideictic, or ceremonial, rhetoric. That perspective can create the
impression that these speeches are merely ritualistic, meaning that
they are relatively insignificant because their content is limited to
memoria, the shared past. However, inaugurals in which presidents
have reconstituted the people in new terms and have selectively reaffirmed and reinvigorated those communal values consistent with
the philosophy and tone of the incoming administration suggest ways
in which a ritualistic occasion may be directed toward other ends. In
other words, praise and blame, the key strategies in ceremonial discourse, can be used ideologically to lay the groundwork for policy initiatives.
What usually distinguishes ceremonial address from policy advocacy is
deliberation, the argumentative form associated with justifying new
policy. Deliberative argument pivots on the issue ofexpediency, specifically, which policy is best able to address identified problems, which
policy will produce more beneficial than evil consequences, and which
is most practical, given available resources.
Lincoln's first inaugural address is significant not only as a masterpiece of epideictic discourse but also as a vehicle for considering the
ways in which epideictic rhetoric is related to policy deliberation. In
that unusual address, Lincoln integrated key elements of these two
genres. Specifically, in the service of epideictic ends (unifying the nation and reaffirming cherished communal values), Lincoln adopted
deliberative means (arguments regarding expediency), and he asked
the audience to contemplate whether or not the policy of secession
was the best means to resolve sectional disputes, and he attempted to
allay the fears of Southern slaveholders about interference in their
domestic affairs. Lincoln's speech displays epideictic contemplation
as a precursor to deliberative decision. 28
The early parts of the speech are consistent with the inaugural traditions that have been identified. Lincoln began by noting the
ceremonial character of the occasion, "a custom as old as the Government itself," and acknowledging the people's role in the ritual of
investiture: "I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in
your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution" (72). While
the speech differs from other inaugurals because Lincoln spoke in a
situation of crisis, early in the speech, as in other inaugurals, Lincoln
reaffirmed the Constitution, including those sections supporting the
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fugitive slave law, and the limits of executive power. Lincoln also followed precedent in swearing a personal oath: "I take the official oath
to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe
the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules" (73).
What followed set forth the philosophy and tone of the upcoming
administration; in this instance, because there was "substantial division," the focus was on secession. If considered apart from historical
precedent, these paragraphs might appear divisively specific. However, when the arguments made here are compared with those laid
out a few months earlier in the fmal annual message of Lincoln's
predecessor, James Buchanan, the argument emerges in a different
light. Buchanan had strong Southern sympathies, and although
Buchanan and Lincoln held differing views of the president's constitutional right to act to hold the Union together, particularly in the
absence of congressional enactments, they agreed that secession was
unconstitutional, and their arguments for that conclusion were remarkably similar. 29 As a result, this section of the speech can fairly
be construed as a general statement of administrative philosophy
and tone that was consistent with an attempt to unify the auditors
into the people.
In other words, although affected by the unusual historical circumstances, the first half of the speech fulfills traditional expectations for
an inaugural address.
The speech becomes exceptional as an inaugural and as epideictic
discourse in the paragraphs following Lincoln's question, "To those,
however, who really love the Union may I not speak?" (74), which was
followed in turn by a series of questions designed to induce the audience to think deeply about secession, the reasons for it, and the
consequences it would bring. Lincoln asked: "Would it not be wise to
ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step?
... Will. .. you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?" (7 4).
The questions were the opening sally in an effort to provoke contemplation of secession as a policy, but although they were rhetorical
questions, they were not adequate to this task. They had to be buttressed by reasoning laid out to show that conclusions previously
reached might be erroneous. Lincoln established a basic premise: "All
profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be
maintained" (7 4). He developed his argument by maintaining that, as
yet, no constitutional rights of slaveholders had been denied, and he
challenged his auditors: "Think, if you can, of a single instance in
which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been
denied" (74). That was a perilous challenge, dependent entirely on
30
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Inaugural Addresses
widespread agreement that no violations had occurred. As a result,
he quickly noted areas of ambiguity. He said:
No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable
length contain express provisions for all possible questions.
Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by
State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say.
May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect
slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. (7 4)
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These areas of ambiguity, he contended, were the issues that divided
the nation, and he did not pretend that resolution of them would be
easy. At that moment, they appeared irreconcilable: "If the minority
will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease.
There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other" (74). But he immediately added
that, despite such a standoff, secession was no solution: "If a minority
in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent
which in turn will divide and ruin them" (74). He developed this claim
by asserting what he presumed would be a universally accepted principle, that in human affairs "unanimity is impossible" (75). As a
result, he argued, one must choose between majority rule on the one
hand and some form of anarchy or despotism on the other.
What must majority rule decide? He narrowed the current dispute
to conflict over the rightness of slavery and whether or not it should
be extended. Given the intensity of the disagreement, he argued that
the fugitive slave laws and the laws suppressing the foreign slave
trade "are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a
community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports
the law itself" (75). Conflicts over these issues, he argued, would only
worsen following separation, possibilities suggested by a series of
rhetorical questions, each of which indicated why differences would
only intensify following division. For instance, he asked: "Can aliens
make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" (75).
Lincoln reminded the audience oflegal avenues of redress, such as
amending the Constitution, but proposed nothing, although he indicated that he would not oppose an amendment making the right to
hold slaves in those states where slavery already existed "express
and irrevocable" (76). His earlier appeal to have "patient confidence
in the ultimate justice of the people" was buttressed by rhetorical
questions, such as "Is there any better or equal hope in the world?"
31
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· CHAPTER Two
and by a reminder of executive liinitations: "This same people he:
wisely given their public servants but little power for mischier' (7
Although he relied heavily on deliberative arguments in the seco
half of the speech, the contemplative, epideictic purpose of the ent.
address was evident in its conclusion, when Lincoln said: "My COL
trymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this subject. Nothi
valuable can be lost by taking time" (76).
.
Lincoln's first inaugural subtly invites contemplation of the c1
trast between the present haste of the secessionists and the timelt
truths their hasty action could destroy. On the one hand, there is t
"eternal truth and justice" of the Almighty and "perpetual Unio
while on the other hand, there are those who would "hurry ... you
hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately" (76). I
Lincoln, secession was "precipitate action." In this interplay betw(
the present moment and timeless truths, even an administration t.lwas wicked, as the South feared that his would be, could not "
riously iDjure the Government in the short space of four years" ('i
Lincoln offered his audience two frames through which to view t:
moment. One, constructed by those who would act impetuously, :
gan with the nation's founding but would end with "destruction oft
Union." The second, characterized by contemplation and thought
consideration, began at the nation's founding but was endless, p
supposing that .the Union was perpetual and, hence, beyond t
ability of a few to destroy. Lincoln's repeated urging of contemplat:
invited the audience to adopt the second frame. Both were introdw
With the inaugural's opening statement, in which Lincoln noted tl
he stood before the audience "in compliance with a custom as old
government itself" (72). The firSt ended when Lincoln posited the p
sibility of "destruction of the Union" (73). The second ended with t
a1fmnation:
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental laws of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government
proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. (73)
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Contemplation and perpetuity were repeatedly linked. "Descend.
from these general principles," he said, "we find the proposition tl
in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the hif
ry of the Union itself" (73).
At the core of the speech is an implied question about the contint
life of the Union and the principles for which it was founded. Will
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Inaugural Addresses
cessionists destroy the vital element of perpetuity, making mortal
and time bound what should be perpetual and timeless?
It was in this context that Lincoln melded past, present, and future
into the timelessly memorable contemplation of his peroration:
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The mystic chords of memory [the timeless past], stretching
from every battlefield and pabiot grave [the founding of the
nation] to every living heart and hearthstone all over this
broad land [the present], will yet swell the chorus of the
Union, when again touched, as surely they will be [a confident positing of the future], by the better angels of our
nature. (76)
Here is Lincoln's fmal exhortation to contemplate, an invocation that
the hurried, passion-strained tensions of the moment be set aside in
favor of the perpetual, timeless Union that is greater than any of
them.
Lincoln's speech is a masterpiece because it extends the symbolic
function of epideictic discourse to include the contemplation that precedes action, because inducements to contemplation are fused with
invitations to participate in the processes by which he reached his
conclusions, and because the concerns of the moment are linked to
eternal questions. As such, the discourse enacts a respect for
thoughtful deliberation by the citizenry, which is the essence of a
democratic system, even at a moment ofits most intense division and
crisis.
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Seen as a rhetorical genre, the American presidential inaugural
address is constituted by the five major elements that we have identified. Our analysis suggests the processes by which a distinctive genre
of epideictic rhetoric comes into being. Its broadest outlines are set by
the general characteristics of epideictic discourse. A specific kind of
ceremony and occasion refines the genre further. In this case, the
presidential inaugural is part of a rite of passage, ofinvestiture, a ritual that establishes a special relationship between speaker and
audience. The .U.S. presidential investiturEt requires a mutual covenant, a rehearsal of fundamental political values, an enunciation of
political principles, and the enactment of the presidential persona.
Also, the conventions of this rhetorical type emerge because presidents are familiar with the tradition and tend to study past inaugurals before formulating their own.
Presidential inaugurals vary, but what makes it illuminating to
33
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view the U.S. presidential inaugural as a genre is that the variatio
of a certain sort. Circumstances· vary, as do the personalities of
presidents, but the variation among inaugurals is predictable.
Inaugural addresses vary substantively because presidents chc
to rehearse aspects of our tradition that are consistent with the pa
or political philosophy they represent. Such selective emphasis i:
lustra ted in Franklin Roosevelt's second inaugural address, in w~
he said:
Instinctively we recognize a deeper need-the need to find
through government the instrument of our united purpose to
solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex
civilization. . . . In this we Americans were discovering no
wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book
of self-government.... The essential democracy of our Nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence
of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can
change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and
free system of elections..... [W]e have made the exercise of
all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private
autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the
people's government. (148)
Later, he added: "Today we reconsecrate our country to long-ch
ished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization" (150). Similarly.
1981, Ronald Reagan chose to emphasize facets of the system in or
to aftlrm values consistent with his conservative political philosoJ:
He said: "Our government has no power except that granted it by
people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of govemm·
which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the g
emed" (181).
A major variation occurs in inaugurals delivered by incumb
presidents. Because a covenant already exists between a reelec
president and the people, the need to reconstitute the communit:
less urgent. Because the country is familiar with a sitting presider
political philosophy, the need to preview administrative philosor
and tone is also muted. Reelected presidents tend to recommit tht:
selves to principles articulated in their previous inaugurals or
highlight only those principles relevant to the agenda for the com
terms. In this respect, subsequent inaugurals by the same presid·
tend to be extensions, not replications, of earlier inaugurals.
The inaugural addresses themselves articulate the reason for t
generic variation. For instance, although he was president in
midst o_f the most serious of crises, Lincoln said:
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Inaugural Addresses
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential
office there is less occasion for an extended address than
there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of
the course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at
the expiration of four years, during which public declarations
have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of
the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be
presented. {77)
•
Similarly, in 1805, Jefferson reported that his conscience told him he
had lived up to the principles he had espoused four years earlier {11).
In 1821, Monroe noted: "If the person thus elected has served the preceding term, an opportunity is afforded him [sic] to review its
principal occurrences and to give the explanation respecting them as
in his judgment may be useful to his constituents" {23). Some presidents have used a subsequent inaugural to review the trials and
successes of their earlier terms, and in so doing, they have rehearsed
the immediate past, a move rarely made in first inaugurals. When
subsequent inaugurals develop specific policies, these are usually described as continuations of policies initiated in the previous term,
continuations presumably endorsed by the president's reelection.
Special conditions faced by some presidents have caused some subsequent inaugurals to resemble first inaugurals. For example, in
1917, confronting challenges quite different from those that existed in
1913, Wilson said: "This is not the time for retrospect. It is time rather
to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the
immediate future" (126). In the face of the events of World War I, he
said:
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty
months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed
have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning
back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we
would have it so or not. {127)
•
The war prompted Wilson to constitute the people in a new way, as
citizens of the world. Similarly, the events leading to World Warn affected Franklin Roosevelt's choices in 1941: "In this day the task of the
people is to save the Nation and its institutions from disruptions from
without" (151). That statement of the task diverged sharply from the
principles emphasized in 1933 and 1937.
Variability in inaugural addresses is evidence of an identifiable
cluster of elements that form the essential inaugural act. Each apparent variation is an emphasis on or a development of one or more of the
35
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•
CHAPTER Two
key elements we have described. Washington's second inaugural address underscored the role of the audience as witnesses and the
address as an extension ofthe oath of office. Jefferson's first address
was a call to unity through the enunciation of political principles; Lincoln's first inaugural was a dramatic appeal to the audience to
participate in reaffirming the mutual covenant between the president and the people; his second was a exploration of what it means to
say that this nation is "under God." Theodore Roosevelt explored the
meaning of our "sacred trust" as it applies to a people with an international role; Franklin Roosevelt's first address explored the nature
of executive leadership and the limits of executive power, whereas his
second constituted the audience a8 a caring people; Wllson's first inaugural explored the meaning of U.S. industrial development. Finally,
Kennedy's address exploited the possibilities of the noble, dignified,
literary language characteristic ofthe epideicticto such an extent that
his address is sometimes attacked for stylistic excess. 30 .
From a generic perspective, then, a presidential inaugural rea>nstitutes the people as an audience that can witness the rite ofinvestiture.
It rehearses communal values from the past, sets forth the political
principles that will guide the new administration, and demonstrates
that the president can enact the presidential persona appropriately.
Still more generally, the presidential Inaugural address is an epideictic ritual that is formal·, unifying, abstract, and eloquent; at the core of
this ritual lies epideictic timelessness-the fusion of the past and future ofthe nation in an eternal present in which we reaffirm what
Franklin Roosevelt called "our covenant with ourselves" (148), a covenant between the executive and the nation that is the essence of
democratic government.
Institutionally, the inaugural address performs two key functions.
In and through it, each president is invested with office, and at a moment of transition, the continuity of the institution and of the system
of government of which it is a part is affirmed.
Finally, the inaugural address is the first of the rhetorical genres
which, taken together, constitute a major part of the presidency as an
institution and of individual presidencies.
36
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The Chief Executive
INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF
THE PRESIDENTS
OF THE UNITED STATES
••
from
George Washington to Lyndon B. Johnson
with an introduction by
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
and commentary by
FRED L. ISRAEL
conceived and edited by
CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS
•
CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC., NEW YORK
�.,
•
The Inaugural Addresses:
Panoranza of Anzerican History
by
ART H UR SC HL ESI NGE R,
J
R .
I do solemnly swear (or affinn) that /will faithf~tlly execute the
Office of President of the Unitecl States, and will, to the best of
my Ability, preserve, protect, and clefend the Constitution of the
United States.
-Oath as prescribed in the Constitution,
Article //, Section 1
•
America has no more solemn rite than the inauguration of a President. Every four years since 1789 the austere ceremony has suspended the passions of politics to permit an interlude of national
reunion. "\Ve have called by different names brethren of the same
principle," said Jefferson after one of the angriest elections of our
history. "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." Putting
doubts and disagreements aside, the nation listens for a moment as
one people to the words of the man they have chosen for the highest office in the land. And every President, as he takes the oath, has
his opportunity to confide to his countrymen his philosophy of
government, his conception of the Presidency, and his vision of the
future. Some have done this more arrestingly than others; but together the inaugural addresses offer an unusual panorama of American history.
The addresses record, first of all, the growth of the United
States from the infant rural country of 1789, made up of four million people in thirteen states straggling along the Atlantic seaboard,
into the mighty industrial society of today, with nearly two hundred million in fifty states stretching from sea to sea and into the
Pacific. They record too the parallel transformation of a weak
nation isolated on the periphery of world politics into the most
powerful nation in history, saddled with interests and responsibilities everywhere on earth.
IV
•
�•
INTR.ODUCTION
v
At the same time, these addresses reflect the tragic problems
that growth and change have brought to the American community.
The idyllic days when John Adams talked of our "national innocence," when Monroe spoke of "the happy Government under
which we live," when Polk asked, "Who shall assign limits to the
achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of
this glorious Union?" have given way to the somber apprehensions
that have shadowed the inaugural pronouncements of the last generation. "Dark pictures and gloomy forebodings are worse than
useless," said McKinley as late as 1901; but his successor, Theodore
Roosevelt, could not escape the troubling proposition: "Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of
administering the affairs of a.continent under the form of a democratic republic." Power gave new perplexity to both domestic and
foreign affairs .
So the rise of industrialism throughout the nineteenth century
•
ght grave problems in its wake. As early as 1889 Benjamin
Harrison began to worry about "our great corporations," and four
years later Cleveland described them as too often "conspiracies
against the interests of the people." At the same time, Cleveland,
warning against the "evils of paternalism," added, "While the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government,
its functions do not include support of the people." But the new
social questions could not be ignored. "Modern life," said Theodore Roosevelt, "is both complex and intense, and the tremendous
changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of
. the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political
being." By 1913 Wilson asked the nation to count the human cost
of industrial growth, "the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men
and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden
of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through." Answering his
question, Wilson demanded that government "be put at the service
of humanity" in order to shield ordinary people "from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot
alter, control, or singly cope with."
Our domestic policy has also confronted with rising intensity
the problem of the absorption of ethnic minorities. The early
Presidents frequently recommended, in the ornate language of
Madison, that the nation "carry on the benevolent plans which have
eritoriously applied to the conversion of our aboriginal neighfrom the degradation and wretchedness of savage life to a
•
participation in the improvements of which the human mind and
manners are susceptible in a civilized state"-a recommendation
�•
vi
INTRODUCTION .
which, alas, had small effect on his countrymen's treatment of the
Indians. After the Civil War, Presidents betrayed concern about
the mounting flow of immigrants. "There are men of all races,"
said Benjamin Harrison, "even the best, whose coming is necessarily
a burden upon our public revenues or a threat to social order.
These should be identified and excluded." Taft displayed special
anxiety over "the admission of Asiatic immigrants who cannot be
amalgamated with our population." But the idea of exclusion on
ethnic grounds came into increasing conflict with the American
conscience. Nor can modern America accept Taft's complacent
message to Negro Americans that "it is not the disposition or within
the province of the Federal Government to interfere with regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs." Better the blunt
language of Grant: The ex-slave "is not possessed of the civil rights
which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should
be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail."
In foreign affairs our Presidents can no longer, with Jefferson,
reject "entangling alliances" or, with Monroe, congratulate the
nation on the "peculiar felicity" that preserves us from the upheavals of the world outside. As the United State~ has grown, the
planet has shrunk. "We have become a great nation," said Theodore Roosevelt, "forced by the fact of its greatness into relations
with the other nations of the earth." "We are provincials no
longer," said Wilson in 1917. " ... There can be no turning back."
Even Calvin Coolidge, while hoping to resurrect the old isolationism, had to concede that "we cannot live to ourselves alone."
Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed-in 1945, after three testing years of
war, "We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches,
nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the
world, members of the human community." It was a bitter education. John F. Kennedy, reminding his fellow countrymen that "the
graves of young Americans who answered the call to service sur·
round the globe," spoke the hard wisdom of history in summoning
the nation "to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle . . .
against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and
war itself."
These addresses, as they illuminate the national experience,
also illuminate the Presidency itself. No President ever took his.
accession to power lightly. Many followed Washington in remarking that "no event could have filled me with greater anxieties"
(though none has been so querulous as Grant in complaining
that he had been "the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever
equaled in political history"). The inaugural series displays the
•
)
•
..................._________________________
�•
INTRODUCTION
vii
growing understanding that the Presidency itself had to be the
center of action in the American system. In 1841 William Henry
Harrison could speak of "the impropriety of Executive interference
in the legislation of Congress" and even regret that the Constitution
had not made the Secretary of the Treasury "entirely independent
of the Executive." But the addresses of the twentieth century, except for the decade of the 1920's, nearly all assume, ~vithout bothering to argue the point, that active and purposeful leadership is the
essence of the Presidency.
It must be conceded that, even in the field of political oratory,
the inaugural address is an inferior art form. It is rarely an occasion for original thought or stimulating reflection. The platitude
quotient tends to be high, the rhetoric stately and self-serving, the
ritual obsessive, and the surprises few. It is astonishing to note
how few truly memorable addresses there have been: certainly
hington's First, Jefferson's First, Lincoln's Second, Franklin
sevelt's First, and Kennedy's; perhaps also Lincoln's First,
eodore Roosevelt's, Wilson's First, and Franklin Roosevelt's Second. The addresses vary considerably among themselves. They
differ in length-from the 135 words of Washington's Second to the
8,466 words of William Henry Harrison's (ironically the President
who served the shortest term made the longest address). They differ
in concept-from Taft's heavily programmatic discourse to the unimpeachable generalities of Eisenhower.
Yet a great strand binds them together. Washington declared
at the beginning of the republic, "The preservation of the sacred
fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of govern1
• ment are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally staked on
the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people."
This is the recurrent theme. "Great is the stake placed in our
hands," said Jackson, for the American experience "will be decisive
in the opinion of mankind of the practicability of our federal system
of government." Van Buren, the first President born in the American republic, taking office at the end of the first half-century of the
Constitution, reviewed the record of "our great experiment" and
concluded that "America will present to every friend of mankind
the cheering proof that a popular government, wisely formed, is
wanting in no element of endurance or strength." "Upon the success of our experiment," said Theodore Roosevelt, "much depends,
not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of
mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout
world will rock to its foundations." "If we lose that sacred fire,"
' •
Franklin Roosevelt, " ... then we shall reject the destiny which
Washington strove so valiantly and so triumphantly to establish."
l
�...
viii
The sacred fire has sometimes flickered and guttered through
the nearly two centuries of American independence. But it burn.:
steadily on today, and "the glow from that fire," in the words o
John F. Kennedy, "can truly light the world." The addresses in
this volume suggest the resources of faith and of hope that will
strengthen American Presidents in the years to come as they confront the perils and possibilities of an uncertain future. And every
President, in his most anxious hour, must respond to the mag
nanimity and resolve of Abraham Lincoln: "With malice towan.:
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives
us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ...
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peacr
among ourselves and with all nations."
••
•
INTRODUCTIO:
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Carter Wilkie
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Office of Speechwriting
Carter Wilkie
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1993-1995
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36420" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431955" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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2008-0699-F
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Carter Wilkie served as a White House speechwriter for the first two years of the first Clinton Administration. This collection contains materials found within Carter Wilkie’s speechwriting files. These materials, primarily dating to 1993 and 1994, regard quotations from President Clinton’s political career, the First 100 Days of the Clinton Administration, and President Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union Address.
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Office of Records Management
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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41 folders in 3 boxes
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Inaugural Address Briefing Book [1]
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Office of Speechwriting
Carter Wilkie
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2008-0699-F
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Box 2
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2008/2008-0699-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431955" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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12/29/2014
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42-t-7431955-20080699F-002-007-2014
7431955