Abraham Lincoln Speaks to This Week

Abraham Lincoln Speaks to This Week

A couple of days ago I accidentally happened across my recording of Aaron Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, and felt compelled to listen.

This 1942 work begins with orchestral music reminiscent of mid-19th century America, providing the setting for hearing selected words of Lincoln’s, which close it. Recordings are not hard to find.

Lincoln’s words must have seemed compelling and appropriate to 1942, and as I listened to Gregory Peck narrate them on my recording I found them relevant, again, to our moment in history. In a week that begins with the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his achievements and ends with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as our president, they still speak.

To me, Copland’s music somehow charges the words with additional power. But if you do not have access to a recording, you may want to read and reread the words by themselves this week. They are for all Americans, no matter what place on the political spectrum we occupy. I’d be interested in your thoughts about what they say to you in 2017...

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. (Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862)

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country. (Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862)

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says 'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' 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." (Lincoln-Douglas debates, October 15, 1858)

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. (Unknown, though in Lincoln's Collected Works)

That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That 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, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. (Gettysburg Address)