The Wrongologist

Today is the 150th
Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. His speech was 271
words long and took just two minutes to deliver. For younger readers, that’s slightly less than 2 tweets.
Lincoln gave his short speech during the middle of the Civil War, on November
19, 1863.

Back then, the New York Times reported:

You can read the Gettysburg
Address here.
Today’s anniversary brings to mind that we will remember John F. Kennedy’s assassination
on Friday. Many have written about the unlikely connections between Lincoln and
Kennedy, most of which offer no insight into either individual, but their
speeches tell us a lot about each person, and there are similarities in the power
of rhetoric used by both Presidents.

One interesting fact is that Abraham
Lincoln gave his 1st inaugural speech in 1861 and John F. Kennedy
gave his 100 years later, in 1961.

Their inaugural speeches, unlike
many, are also memorable. Lincoln, as the nation was beginning to split apart,
ended his speech by affirming that the Union would endure once Americans were again
guided by the “better angels of our nature.” Succession had already happened by
Lincoln’s first Inaugural. Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as President of
the Confederacy two weeks earlier. Lincoln had arrived in Washington in secret
to avoid danger. He spoke
almost exclusively about succession and slavery:

He
did clearly say that no one had the right to secede from the union, and that he
would oppose succession, but not slavery. He ended with:

He had no speechwriter, yet: “the
mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union when
touched…by the better angels of our nature” is as near to capturing the
essence of what it means to be part of one’s country. He speaks to the nation in
words that all can hear.

At his 2nd Inaugural, the Civil War
had ended, and Lincoln sought to take the nation on a journey of healing:

Lincoln would die a little more than a month later.

And a century later, John F. Kennedy took office on a cold day, during a
cold war that threatened to end the world through the use of nuclear weapons.
There were domestic issues that again threatened the Union in the form of civil
rights and school desegregation. JFK gave what was the 4th shortest
and arguably the most
memorable inaugural address. We all know these words:

Kennedy optimistically called for cooperation among nations in challenging
“tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.” He concluded by asking Americans
and our “fellow citizens of the world” to consider “what together we can do for
the freedom of man.”

Unlike
Lincoln, Kennedy had a speechwriter, the gifted Ted Sorensen, who died in 2000.
In his memoir, “Counselor” he wrote:

This
speech was the template for the great JFK speeches that followed. It had energy
and determination; it contained a real agenda for the future; and it energized
a quiescent generation that previously had not been asked to do anything.
Like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his Inaugurals, Kennedy’s Inaugural contained
both power and poetry, including, “Let every nation know…that we shall oppose
any foe”.

Lincoln
said he would not interfere with slavery, but the Civil War that he prosecuted did ultimately end slavery. Kennedy, like Lincoln, would revise his views
about the federal government’s role in securing civil rights for all in
America.

Our leaders often can’t determine
or even anticipate the course of events. Much of their individual greatness has
come from their ability to adapt and change, and then communicate to us in ways that help us understand
the ideals that define us.

As Lincoln said, we are sometimes
guided by the better angels of our nature.

The speeches of both men are
worth remembering for reasons beyond the eloquent phrases or the coincidence
of their being 100 years apart. Lincoln
and Kennedy, perhaps unlike other American presidents, except perhaps FDR, had
a unique ability to stir the soul and define our purpose as a people.