November: Lincoln's Elegy at Gettysburg

Front Cover
Indiana University Press, Nov 9, 2001 - History - 344 pages

It begins with the search for hallowed ground, the exact place from which Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. In bleak November, Kent Gramm makes a pilgrimage to the most famous battleground in American history and over the course of a month transforms his search into a discovery of the meaning of Lincoln's elegy for America's identity.

For Gramm, the century that began with Lincoln's address and ended with the assassinations of the 1960s saw the destruction of the 'modern' world and with it America's sense of purpose. The book reflects on the November anniversaries of public events such as the Armistice that ended World War One, Kristallnacht, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the death of C. S. Lewis, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, and the publication of Robert F. Kennedy's To Seek a Newer World, and also on private events in Gramm's family history, provide the occasions for Gramm's meditations on public and private heroism, on modernism's hopes and postmodern despair. In November, he asks us to seek a path toward the 'new birth of freedom' that Lincoln envisioned at Gettysburg.

"The month begins with things that perish. But ultimately, November is a journey of hope, as was Lincoln's journey to Gettysburg. So too I will journey to Gettysburg in these pages. Like Lincoln's fellow citizens, I go there to assuage personal grief, to find answers; and I hope, for me as for them, that my personal sorrows become a vehicle for larger answers and a larger purpose. Lincoln addressed their grief, why not mine; he gave his generation purpose, why not ours."

From inside the book

Contents

NOVEMBER
1
Brought Forth Pen and Sword
30
NOVEMBER 4
41
NOVEMBER 5
63
NOVEMBER 9
73
NOVEMBER 14
84
NOVEMBER 15
96
NOVEMBER 16
106
NOVEMBER 22
182
NOVEMBER 23
193
NOVEMBER 25
213
NOVEMBER 26
228
NOVEMBER 27
251
NOVEMBER 29
266
NOVEMBER 30
273
Modernism and Postmodernism
285

NOVEMBER 17
119
The Gettysburg Address
131
NOVEMBER 20
162
NOVEMBER 21
171
Elegy Written in a Country ChurchYard
298
Notes on the Sources
305
Copyright

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Page 299 - Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes...
Page 296 - For, so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world...
Page 294 - But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return ! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 40 And all their echoes mourn.
Page 198 - Romeo, and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish Sun.
Page 299 - Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Page 295 - Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies...

About the author (2001)

Kent Gramm is Program Director of the Seminary Ridge Historical Preservation Foundation and author of Gettysburg: A Meditation on War and Values and Somebody's Darling: Essays on the Civil War, forthcoming from Indiana University Press.

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