![]() ![]() He wins my heart because of his exemplary character, his deep understanding of human affairs, his principled and prudent leadership during the Civil, his courageous deeds, and, not least, his way with words and his inspiring speeches. Time and study-not to mention living in the United States under thirteen presidents-have steadily increased my love and admiration of Lincoln. I loved Lincoln well before I really knew why he deserved my-and our-veneration. One of my prize possessions (a birthday present, I believe) was a large loose-leaf scrapbook bearing a large portrait of President Lincoln as its leather-bound cover. ![]() Born in Chicago on Lincoln’s birthday (1939), to immigrant parents who admired Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, I was educated in a public school whose classrooms displayed portraits of Lincoln (and George Washington) and which closed annually (on the exact date, February 12th) in honor of Lincoln’s birthday, still in Illinois a civic holiday. At first, it was largely an accident of birth. What was Lincoln’s purpose for the Gettysburg Address, according to Kass? How does the structure and imagery of the Address serve this purpose? How, and why, does Lincoln change the Declaration of Independence? How does he reinterpret the American Founding? How is the nation’s “new birth of freedom” related to its “first” birth? How are the principles of freedom and equality to be joined under this “new founding”? Who is responsible for the nation’s rebirth and re-founding? Why is the Gettysburg Address still meaningful to us today?įrom the time I was old enough to have a hero, Abraham Lincoln has been mine. Introduction This essay interpreting the Gettysburg Address is based on a talk given in June 2007 at the AEI World Forum in Beaver Creek, Colorado, by humanist educator and AEI scholar Leon R. ![]()
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