“Perhaps half our people…are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian…finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those [revolutionary] days by blood, they find they have none,…but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence…they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men….That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together,…as long as the love of freedom exists.”—Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858
Yesterday afternoon, WNYC-FM’s Jonathan Schwartz played Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. It reminded me that, though Thomas Jefferson might have written the Declaration of Independence, it was Abraham Lincoln who had reinterpreted and extended it for generations to follow.
(By the way, in his haste to honor Lyndon Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Independence Day that year, New York Times columnist Frank Rich today unaccountably—and inexcusably—left out Lincoln, the essential transitional figure between Jefferson and Johnson in expanding the American promise to all.)
I’ve read a fair amount of the 16th President’s writings as well as several biographies, but I only came across the above quote for the first time a week ago. As the son and grandson of Irish immigrants, it obviously has special resonance for me.
Lincoln Portrait, which Copland wrote himself, drew heavily on a number of the President’s speeches and writings, notably the Gettysburg Address and his annual message to Congress in December 1862. Perhaps the folksy overtones of the above quote (“That old Declaration of Independence”) might not have fit in that well with the austere majesty of the Portrait narration (rendered, on the recording I heard yesterday, by Adlai Stevenson, who sounded to me, on first hearing, like the late actor E.G. Marshall).
Nevertheless, the quote goes a long way toward explaining so much about American history: about why so many foreigners have taken the promise of the Declaration to such heart that many have given their lives in defense of their new country; about why, more than two centuries after the release of the Declaration, it still represented a beacon of hope to dissidents in places like Communist Russia and pre-Tiananmen Square China; and about why Lincoln himself has become such a towering figure not just in American but world history.
Yesterday afternoon, WNYC-FM’s Jonathan Schwartz played Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. It reminded me that, though Thomas Jefferson might have written the Declaration of Independence, it was Abraham Lincoln who had reinterpreted and extended it for generations to follow.
(By the way, in his haste to honor Lyndon Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Independence Day that year, New York Times columnist Frank Rich today unaccountably—and inexcusably—left out Lincoln, the essential transitional figure between Jefferson and Johnson in expanding the American promise to all.)
I’ve read a fair amount of the 16th President’s writings as well as several biographies, but I only came across the above quote for the first time a week ago. As the son and grandson of Irish immigrants, it obviously has special resonance for me.
Lincoln Portrait, which Copland wrote himself, drew heavily on a number of the President’s speeches and writings, notably the Gettysburg Address and his annual message to Congress in December 1862. Perhaps the folksy overtones of the above quote (“That old Declaration of Independence”) might not have fit in that well with the austere majesty of the Portrait narration (rendered, on the recording I heard yesterday, by Adlai Stevenson, who sounded to me, on first hearing, like the late actor E.G. Marshall).
Nevertheless, the quote goes a long way toward explaining so much about American history: about why so many foreigners have taken the promise of the Declaration to such heart that many have given their lives in defense of their new country; about why, more than two centuries after the release of the Declaration, it still represented a beacon of hope to dissidents in places like Communist Russia and pre-Tiananmen Square China; and about why Lincoln himself has become such a towering figure not just in American but world history.
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