The Tracing of the Development of An American Aesthetic of Being Within the Presidential Rhetoric of Washington’s “Farewell Address,” Lincoln’s“Gettysburg Address,” and

The Tracing of the Development of An American Aesthetic ofBeing Within the Presidential Rhetoric of Washington’s

“Farewell Address,” Lincoln’s

“Gettysburg Address,” and Kennedy’s “Inaugural Address”

In the historical record of American political oratory,three presidential speeches are traditionally remarked upon by scholars as outstandingly influential in the shaping of American political policy and the American political consciousness. These three speeches are George Washington’s, “Farewell Address,” delivered at the end of his second term as President, Abraham Lincoln’s, “GettysburgAddress,” delivered as part of the dedication ceremonies forthe new Gettysburg Military Cemetery after the Battle at Gettysburg, and John F. Kennedy’s, “Inaugural Address,” delivered, obviously, as part of his inaugural ceremony. Inthe popular tradition, Lincoln’s, “Gettysburg Address,” is without question the most famous of the three, with virtually any phrase of the short speech recognizable upon quotation by nearly every American alive. Kennedy’s, “Inaugural Address,” runs a close second, with the phrase beginning with, “Ask not what you can do for your country . . .,” as commonly recognizable as Lincoln’s, “Fourscore and seven years ago . . .” Today, both the text and content of Washington’s address is virtually unknown to the greater part of the American populace. However, this circumstance was not always the case. Washington’s speech presented and developed three overarching themes, union,

liberty, and the hand of Providence in the preservation of these national qualities that would become central to the meaning and oratorical power of the two later orations. While the rhetorical aesthetic informing Washington’s speechquickly went out of style in American oratory, the text of the speech presented the basic conceptual principles for an aesthetic, if not for a theology, of an American way of being that the rhetoric of both Lincoln’s and Kennedy’s addresses depend upon for building meaning and effectiveness.

George Washington was not known as an accomplished public speaker. Although he performed as a speaker on many occasions as both Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Armies and President of the new republic, he was judged as “slow in expression” and as lacking fluency in his delivery (Capp 26). Washington was painfully aware of his inadequacy, although that sense of inadequacy may have had its roots in his belief that his formal education was inferior to that of many of his compatriots. In fact, Washington did not write his farewell address, although he did supervise the content. James Madison wrote the first draft at the end of Washington’s first presidential term in 1792, when Washington originally planned to retire. Alexander Hamilton was predominately responsible for the shape of the final draft delivered in 1796, with input, revisions, and suggestions provided by James Madison and

John Jay (26-27).

The historical and political context within which Washington’s speech was composed and delivered, as well as the content, mark the speech as historically significant in the political development of the United States. The Constitution was newly ratified. New states formed from frontier territories were beginning to enter the union. A newly ratified treaty with Spain had brought all the territory east of the Mississippi River under American dominion. The debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was in full swing and seemed to be presaging theformation of powerful political parties. And, not among theleast of the circumstances contributing to the significance of Washington’s farewell, his decision to decline an appointment to a third term laid to rest the hopes of American Monarchists and the fears of American Republicans that the presidency would evolve/devolve into a defacto monarchy.

Washington’s speech is exhortatory but in a very didactic way. He calls upon the ideals of the Revolution tounite the populace of the new republic behind the newly formed Federal system of government and then methodically instructs the members of Congress in an ethics for maintaining political unity and the consequences of violating those ethics. Washington’s exhortation is

predominately rational, with an emotional appeal running through the entire text as an undercurrent that flows from the power of his public ethos. This undercurrent is evidentin the opening of the speech where Washington announced his intention to decline appointment to a third term as president: “The impression with which I first undertook thearduous trust (the Presidency) were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust I will only say, that I have with good intentions contributed towards the organization and administration of government, the best exertions of which a fallible judgment was capable” (29).

Most analyses of Washington’s speech focus on the two cautionary warnings concerning foreign entanglements and theformation of political parties as the most historically and politically significant segments of his address. These warnings undoubtedly affected the subsequent formation of American political institutions and practice. However, thisfocus is extremely limited, if not reductively selective, asboth warnings were offered as the most eminent examples of the forces that could destroy the promise and hope of the newly won American freedom. Washington’s speech articulatesthese concerns within a development of his vision of the characteristics of the nature of the political union as it should develop.

Although the Constitution had been ratified, the

conception of how a union of states under a federal power would operate, what benefits would be derived from that union, and what forces could tear that union apart was understood in a vastly different way from the way we understand it today. Washington began his address by identifying what he saw as the salient characteristics of the new union:

The unity of government which constitutes you as one people

is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in

the edifice of your real independence, the support of your

tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your

prosperity, of that liberty which you so highly prize. But as it

is easy to forsee, that from different causes and from different

quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed,

to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth . . . it is of

infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense

value of your national union . . . discountenancing whatever may

suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned;

and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt

to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble

the sacred ties which now link the various parts (30-31).

This passage is crucial because within it are stated

all the supports, ideological, metaphysical, and spiritual,

of Washington’s vision for the character of the new

political union, which mark a vision for an American way of

being that will develop into a kind of cultural/mental

shorthand for developing meaning within American political

discourse that shaped both the rhetoric and ideological

content of both Lincoln’s and Kennedy’s famous speeches.

From this point in the “Farewell Address” forward Washington antithetically develops his Federalist vision of the forces he sees as capable of either destroying or strengthening the nascent American union. Immediately following the above quoted segment he takes great pains to subordinate regional loyalties to a greater ideal of union and to identify the qualities of a national identity unified

within the sacrarium of American liberty.

Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country

has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of

American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must

always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than anyappellation

derived from local discriminations. With slight shadesof difference,

you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political

principles . . . But these considerations, however powerfully they

address them to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those

which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every

portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for

carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole (31).

From this point within his address, he proceeds to identify some specific economic interests of each region of the new union and opposes each antithetically, North to South, East to West, to illustrate the interdependence of the economic

and political interests of each region to a newly growing prosperity for the whole that is dependent upon the new political union. Washington develops the idea that regionalidentification coupled with the naturally fractious nature of all human relations is a potentially destructive force that can only be allayed by a devotion to the principles of union as constitutive of the liberty so recently won. “Respect for its [the union’s] authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty” (33-34).

Washington presents true liberty as dependent upon the authority and maintenance of a federal union. He has begun constructing an epistemology by identifying the relationshipbetween liberty and union as symbiotic. Alter or destroy one, he cautions, and everyone loses both. But this political/spiritual symbiosis is not simply a dualistic symbiosis with strictly civil roots or consequences. It is conceived and constructed by Washington (and his Federalist cabinet) as a tripartite symbiosis, with the constancy of religion and the practice of religious faith as the third, and perhaps most vital, component in a civil/spiritual/religious trinity that will support an enduring federal union.

Of all dispositions and habits, which lead to political

prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism,who

should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness,

these firmest props of the destinies of men and citizens. The

mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect

and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connection

with private and public felicity . . . And let us with caution indulge

the supposition that morality can be maintained withoutreligion.

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education

on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid

us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of

religious principles.

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a

necessary spring of popular government. The rule . . .extends

with more or less force to every species of free government.

Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon

attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (37).

Obviously, in Washington’s construction of the character of the American political union, the precepts of religion, a Christian religion, are necessary for true union and true liberty to exist. Destroy or modify any of these componentsand the whole edifice collapses, with tyranny, despotism, asthe inevitable result.

Washington addresses four main topics within his speech, the announcement of his retirement, the authority ofconstitutionalized union as the primary loyalty for the patriotic American citizen, the destructive power of factional political parties, and the danger of dissolution inherent in foreign entanglements, with a fifth, the fiscal and political dangers inherent in maintaining a standing army, buried within the latter topic. But while doing all this, he reiterates, consolidates, and incorporates the conceptual/intellectual bases from which the form of the constitutionalized union sprang and shapes them into a vision of an American identity and ethics based upon civil and spiritual responsibilities, duties, and rights that define not only an ideal of character for the union but an ideal of character for the patriotic citizen as well. Washington’s address presents the intellectual rudiments of an aesthetic of American being, which seems almost at odds

with the Ciceronian style of his rhetoric.

To modern sensibilities, Washington’s address, for a political speech, contains a strange mix of personal and public retrospectives. He speaks of his personal accomplishments, professed failings, plans, and desires within both the opening and closing of his text. Even giventhe specific objective of announcing his plans to decline appointment to a third term of the presidency as public in nature, the rather lengthy sequey from his announcement intohis thoughts on the preservation of the union and the equally long conclusion reiterating the pattern and materialof the opening, with their referencing of personal experience and character self-judgment, seem, from a modern perspective, inappropriate within the formally political context of the delivery. Contrast this tactic to Lyndon Johnson’s announcement not to seek nor accept nomination fora second term in 1968. Johnson’s announcement occurs almostas a tag to his address and is presented as a flat statementof intent with no personal elaboration or explanation. But Washington’s unselfconscious mixing of public and private concerns is consistent with the classically periodic construction of his address and his vision of a distinctly American mode of existence.

Washington directed his speech writers to construct an address in the classically plain style, which they did, for

the most part. Even though much of the sentence construction within the address is fraught with embedded clauses and qualifications that sound clumsy and labored to modern ears, the salient points made in the constructing of the whole, the kola, are logically and metrically balanced and focused toward a concluding kola which completes the construction of a balanced period. In addition, the rhetorical flourishes used are those classically confined toa polished style. Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche are conspicuously used sparingly. Only one instance of anaphoraoccurs within the address, buried deeply in the middle, and other rhetorical devices classically associated to either the forceful or grandiloquent styles, such as chiasmi, alliteration, and ana or antistrophe are noticeably absent. Such flourishes would have run counter to Washington’s professed vision of himself as a humble, citizen farmer, Cincinattus, performing his duties out of obligation rather than plans for personal gain. In addition, if his speaking skills were as limited as reported, the effect of such flourishes would most likely have been lost, serving, instead, to project an image of pretension.

Delivered with consideration, the speech would flow evenly but never attain the quality of melody, as both Lincoln’s and Kennedy’s speeches do, and, perhaps, this single aspect of Washington’s address accounts for its lack of popular recognition. Rhetorically, the speech never

soars but flows easily, reasonably, and inexorably, to its conclusion. To remove one section from the whole would diminish the effect of the remaining passages. This is an effect of its periodic construction. One completed period functions as a kola for a greater period, until the greater meaning of the whole appears through the coordinated unification of the lesser parts.

The style of the composition is appropriate to Washington’s theme and purpose. His purpose was not to arouse action, to initiate radical change, but to identify, to inform, and to teach. He constructs an ideal for the character of a true American patriot and a true American union. The qualities of character of that ideal patriot areconceived as fostered and dependent upon a stable political union founded upon the same principles of virtuous behavior thought essential for the promotion and preservation of the good life: dedication to cooperation with your fellow man, dedication to true liberty, and dedication to God. What is uniquely American in this formulation is the conception thatthe virtues thought necessary for the good life of the individual citizen were the same as the virtues thought necessary for good government. The goals, methods, and virtues of the governed and governing were to be identical, and those qualities would, percourse, be reflected by the whole. Such a conception of society was radical enough at the time to be conceived as a goal, although an achievable

one. Washington couches his warnings to Congress within a vision of achieving that goal, and, in fact, defines the characteristics by which the goal may be recognized and attained. He gives shape to an image of an ideal. Lincoln at Gettysburg, as we shall see, relies on a universalizationof that image within his public for developing meaning in his address. Lincoln, unlike Washington, is not making an appeal to reason. His appeal is passionate, in the Christian sense.

Lincoln was the first president elected to office who was born after the founding era, in 1809, and who was raisedon the frontier, outside the centers of refined civilization. Much investigation and speculation has been spent trying to discern the roots of Lincoln’s ideas of equality, most likely because of his ambiguous stance on slavery, and, obviously, because of the abolitionist sentiment surrounding the circumstances of the Civil War. However, far less discourse has focused on the development of his understanding and portrayals of political union. Gary Wills in his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words ThatRemade America addresses this issue but only within the constraints of how Lincoln perceived his duties as Presidentduring the Civil War and the relationship of that conceptionto his actions as President. The practical experience of living on the frontier as it was then constituted is virtually ignored in Lincoln scholarship, although Wills,

again, touches on this in his exploration of Lincoln’s attitude toward the war (177-82). The very real experience of the need for a physical self-sufficiency that was tempered by an economic and political dependency upon the more developed institutions of more settled regions for the relief of the less immediate dangers and pressures of physical survival would seem to have produced a profound influence on the thinking of a thoughtful man such as Lincoln.

The bloody war over the survival of the American political union, of course, frames Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg. Washington’s fear of the power of regionalism to destroy the American union was realized for the very reason of regional self-interest that he had singled out andidentified. For many Americans, the incidents leading up tosecession, such as the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott decision of the supreme court, were evidence of efforts to preserve the union at any cost by catering to thecapricious self-interest of unscrupulous men. As Edward Everett stated the idea, “A sad foreboding of what would ensue . . . has haunted me through life, and led me, perhapstoo long, to tread in the path of hopeless compromise, in the fond endeavor to conciliate those who were predeterminednot to be conciliated” (Wills 241). After the fact reflections, as the explanation of the position of southern leaders during these incidents in Everett’s oration at

Gettysburg indicate, and the one quoted above, seem to suggest that a common a belief was held that the Civil War was the result of a failing of both national and individual character.

Everett characterizes the act of rebellion as a kind ofheresy because “of all the crimes against the law of the land it [rebellion] is singled out for the denunciation of religion” (235). The causes of the Civil War were seen as more than the result of a progression of political clashes leading to violent dissolution of the union. Rather, the root causes of that war were also seen by many as the personal failings of the individuals comprising the union, not just the political positioning of regional states. The leaders of the rebellion appeared to have held their personal interests in higher regard than those of the public, while the supporters of the union failed to hold fast to all the ideals embodied in the founding of the union, and, as a consequence, all were suffering the wrathful intervention of God.

An internalization of the character qualities of the ideal American patriot defined by Washington’s tripartite symbiosis is evident in both Everett’s and Lincoln’s addresses at Gettysburg. Wills notes the high abstraction of thought evident in Lincoln’s address and the “organic andfamilial” quality of his imagery (Wills 87-88). Such a

dualism is attractive but lays a trap in the intellectual necessity for identifying those qualities as primarily constitutive of the immense popularity and influence the speech has had in American thought and practice. It also lays the intellectual trap that words are somehow more symbolically abstract than raw image and, as such, make the concepts conveyed more difficult to identify with on an immediate, personal level than imagery, a position which strikes me as patently false. Spirituality is an abstraction of the human experience of the mind. The qualities of spirit are abstracted from that abstraction. Yet, these spiritual qualities are as strongly and as concretely experienced by many as, say, the taste of a pieceof cake.

The rhetorical construction of the “Gettysburg Address”imparts a decidedly melodic quality to the sound of the language used, which tends to evoke, like music, personal connotations of meaning founded upon internalized abstractions of personal experience. The construction and language of the address has an anthem-like quality to it, and, in fact, functioned in many ways as an American national anthem for many years before the official adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” School children were required to memorize it in its totality, and it was recited as a matter of course at patriotic gatherings. Even today, recitation of the opening refrain of the address comes

easily and automatically to many Americans when asked. And while the learning and reciting of the text of the address almost attained the status of a religious ritual, that very destiny speaks of the personalized sense of truth viewed as inherent in the tenets shaping the text. In other words, a very strong assumption that shared spiritual goals and character qualities are common to identity as an American informs the words of the address and assists in creating itsmeaning. As a result, the abstractions within the expressions of the address derive a great deal of their meaning from a sense of truth rooted in a high degree of identification with the ideals informing the text. In orderto experience the power of Lincoln’s rhetoric, the hearer must hold her personal experiences and beliefs as the primary elements of proof that prove the truth of the ideas Lincoln’s abstractions express.

Wills’ identification of the address as conforming to aGreek template for funeral orations is indisputable. Furthermore, the extensive use of rhetorical constructions by Lincoln, unlike Washington’s use of rhetoric, is decidedly Greek in flavor, violating, as it does, many Ciceronian mandates. Within a Ciceronian conception of style, Lincoln’s address is more polished than plain, employing rhetorical flourishes for development of meaning instead of orchestrating kola into meaningful periods. Within the Greek tradition, Lincoln’s style is more

reminiscent of Gorgias than Pericles, as Wills intimates by including without commentary an appendice containing a funeral oration composed by Gorgias.

Perhaps the greatest difference between the Ciceronian and Gorgian traditions is that within the Gorgian tradition the language points to meaning rather than continuously laboring to develop meaning. In other words, a Gorgian construction relies on indications of contexts for meaning with which all who are listening are familiar. For example,in his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias says, “For either by will of Fate and decision of the gods and vote of Necessity did she do what she did . . . (Bizzell 40), which develops meaning through indication to culturally common referents, relying on the audience’s having some personal understandingof the power and consequences of the “will of Fate,” the “decision of the gods,” and the “vote of Necessity” as they pertain to Helen’s situation, not to mention the Helen of Troy legend and the moral teachings attendant to that legend. The impact of Gorgias’ encomium on a Greek audiencesteeped in the meaning and teachings of the legend to where they became constitutive of a sense of identity as a Greek, meanings and teachings functioning at the very depths of unconscious thought as constitutive of a sense of “Greekness,” can only be imagined, and is only somewhat devined by existing criticisms of Gorgias’ techniques.

Within this understanding of Gorgian rhetoric, we can recognize that Lincoln’s Gettysburg address unmistakably relies upon an internalized understanding of the American experience for its power and sense. The power of its propositions depends upon a personalization of the values composed from what I have termed Washington’s tripartite, symbiotic configuration of the character of American political union. If we look at Lincoln’s address from a Gorgian perspective, there is not a single sentence which isnot rhetorically indicative in the sense explained above. The opening sentence, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” contains a grammatical sense that cannot be disputed. The entire sentence poses as a simple declaration of historical fact. However, the moral weight of the declaration, the context which makes the statement fitting for a dedication to a cemetery dedicated to those who fell in defense of a sacred union, and allows the statement to function as a political commentary, residesin a knowledge of the tradition and history from which the key word, Liberty, and the key phrase, “all men are created equal,” derive their moral authority and fitness for the occasion.

Wills makes note of Lincoln’s use of the indicative referents this and that as adding to the abstraction of

Lincoln’s text (54). This usage also heightens the degree of personalized, extratextual, referencing the hearer must make in order to derive meaning from the placement of the referent. The audience must personally orient themselves to“this continent” upon which they are now, this very instant,standing and upon which a “new nation” was brought forth. For someone not invested with an understanding of the moral authority invested in the traditions invoked in the opening sentence, the referent may, conceivably, be interpreted as only spatial. Lincoln relies upon this method of indicationto build both moral and rhetorical force for his text by separating the ideal from the immediate reality when he shifts to the use of that to indicate the nation founded “Four score and seven years ago” in the phrase “testing whether that nation or any nation . . . can long endure.” The implied separation of the ideal, earlier nation and the present state of reality, is presented as implicitly understood, but only if the audience self-references both the tradition informing the ideal and the circumstances surrounding the occasion of delivery. Lincoln then connectsthe two indicative referents in the last line within the phrase “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . . ,” which, without understanding the experiential foundation supporting the previous disjunction of indication as rhetorical, appears as a logical disjunction created by a misuse of grammar, or an indicationof complete difference.

In a rhetorical sense, Lincoln was preaching to the choir, even though many in his immediate and subsequent audience disagreed with his positioning of equality within the law of the founding of the union. The disputes concerning it inclusion in the address were founded upon points of established law, not moral ones. The legal natureof these disputes function as a further indication of the internalization of the moral precepts shaping the conceptionof the American character.

Lincoln’s portrayal of the division of the union was a fact that all listening were painfully aware of and they all, ostensibly, stood united in their devotion to its preservation. When he states that “We have come to dedicatea portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live,” the idealof union as a personally experienced and constituted ideal is given intellectual and moral weight by the actions of those who sacrificed their lives to restore a union that once existed in this very spot but exists no more, except asan ideal within each American hearing and heeding his words.In other words, the restoration Wills speaks of in his text as Lincoln’s objective for his presidency was a physical restoration of an existent ideal holding a religious sanctity, the proof of which was manifest in the willing deaths of so many of its defenders. This would have been implicitly understood and accepted by his audience.

In short, the power of Lincoln’s address depends upon an ingrained acceptance by the listener of the elements of an American political ideal as the self-evident elements of a true American character. For the most part, not only would the rhetorical power of Lincoln’s address have been lost on Washington’s audience but the text would have been unintelligible except for a very generalized understanding that would arise from the shared lexicon and grammar of composition. The point of Lincoln’s oration would have appeared to them as flat, one dimensional, and perversely obtuse. The subtextual, cultural connections which give Lincoln’s address a sense of power and depth for moderns would not have been available to the members of Washington’saudience.

On the other hand, Edward Everett’s oration would have been completely understandable and, possibly, lauded for itsclarity and forthrightness. His construction is decidedly Ciceronian, like Washington’s, although more grandiloquent in its polish. His explanation of the legality and moralityof the rebellion is illustrated with European and feudal examples, with which the founders would have been conversant, and developed reasonably within the Ciceronian conventions of balanced kolas and periods. Everett explicitly recites a narrative history to develop meaning within his text, as Washington narrates as history the recent experience of the members of Congress to develop

meaning within his text. And here is where the great difference between their and Lincoln’s style lies.

Within the rhetoric used by both Everett and Washingtonpublic mores and history appear to function as the primary referents for the creation of meaning for the individual citizen within the audience, within both language and publicaffairs. Meaning is created within the authority of recorded experience. Within Lincoln’s rhetoric, the prior private experience of those same public mores and history bythe individual citizen appears to function as the primary authority for the creation of meaning for those mores and history. If this is so, and I think it is, the rhetoric of Everett’s and Washington’s speeches indicates the strong possibility that they conceived of the source for meaning inlanguage as residing within public history, with any concurrence between the public and private understandings ofthose meanings adhering closely to a classical conception ofthe citizen and the individual. In other words, for Everettand Washington, the power of their rhetoric is conceived as ultimately residing within the public authority of the performance. Public values determine the meanings in language they wish to convey. Any understandings of the text arising from individually held values are seen as legitimate in so far as they concur with the dominant publicvalues.

Lincoln’s construing of these connections, however, appears radically different. His understanding of the powerof rhetoric to create meaning appears founded within an understanding of meaning as arising from an internalization of public precepts within the individual citizen. A modified inversion of the relationship of individual values to public values in the creation of meaning seems at work inLincoln’s rhetoric. For Lincoln, an individual citizen’s private experience of public values appears to constitute authoritative meaning for the audience. He further appears to understand that the precepts shaping the internalized andpersonal values of his audience are congruent to the precepts that inform the ideal of American character, an ideal that conforms to that which Washington exhorted Congress to sanctify.

The rhetorical style of the Gettysburg address relies heavily on a uniquely American understanding of the duties of a citizen in a participatory government as a code of morality and an internalized belief in the nature of the relationship of the individual citizen to those duties as sacred for its emotional force and political meaning. The format of the logical development, as Wills has shown, may have its roots in the Greek epideictic tradition, and the Greek roots of the forms of the tropes and figures used are readily identifiable as such. But the use to which those tropes and figures were put by Lincoln relies entirely for

its rhetorical power upon each individual listening understanding the American experience as cultural and the American ideal of character outlined by Washington seventy-two years earlier as spiritual in nature and sacredly legitimate. As Pauline Maier states it, “The eloquence of Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s texts [the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address] depended in part onthe resonances they captured, and their messages were convincing because the hearts of their audiences had been--to adopt the language of Lincoln’s early New England ancestors, on which he drew so heavily in the dark years of the Civil war--’prepared’ to receive it” (xx).

Lincoln’s appeal in his address is a passionate appeal,but the passions he wishes to arouse are the passions of an American secular Christian virtue. The Union fallen at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives that the union might live,as Christ sacrificed his life so men may live in sanctity. The fallen have consecrated “this ground,” this nation, withtheir sacrifice for the beliefs inherent in the conceptions and propositions of that nation founded “Four score and seven years ago.” The kingdom of heaven once existed on earth but has fallen. However, it shall be restored throughthe faith and efforts of the true believers. By dedicating full efforts to the salvation of the union a sacred rebirth of what has been lost, freedom, shall occur, “under God.” The connections between the embodiment of Christian virtues

within the ideals of self-government are made without being forced, suggested through the use of key words within the ideologically charged context. The power of Lincoln’s rhetoric and the passion of its appeal lies in the emotionalconnection experienced by the listener to salvation and its loss.

This address is not a reasoned appeal. It does not develop clear, formalized connections from one statement to the next. Rather, it shortcuts to the well of passion it isdesigned to draw from, which can only be done if all who listen are familiar with the destination. The paths for arriving there were many, and the choice of route was left open. Lincoln was well aware that designating a preferred route would lead to dispute. Like a good Protestant minister, he reminded his flock of their objective as spiritual beings, pointed the way with a gentle reminder of the established guidelines, and let the particulars of how they arrived at their destination up to them. For this strategy to work, a commonly shared and deeply ingrained system of values must be in place.

Washington was aware that the desire for liberty and the deeply held religious faith of the American population during the founding were strongly shared commonalties. The concept of political union, however, was not. He sought to shore up one with the strength of the other two by linking

them together through creating a necessity of survival for the parts that was dependent upon the necessity of survival for the whole. In his “Farewell Address,” he sought to develop a logical necessity for this linking. Lincoln’s address, however, shows that the idea of union had attained the shared commonality of a cultural value that Washington had sought. A shared ideological value, at least, was assigned to the concept of union and held in common by all Americans of the period (as evidenced by the fact that the Confederacy sought, and fought, as a union of independent states, albeit, constituted differently than the union they had left), with the spiritual character of union formulated by Washington holding an emotional and spiritual value for those in the North. With these qualities held in common value by his audience, Lincoln could shortcut through the necessity of creating links of formal reason and head straight for the gut reaction of acquiescence to the principles of a traditional union as moral principles, with the now traditionalized values of being an American understood as supporting, if not creating, it.

The “Gettysburg Address” is a manipulative speech, in the way all emotional appeals are manipulative. As to whether it was a calculated political manipulation, as Willsproposes, remains obscure. If so, the address is a magnificent example of brilliant sophistry. If not, the address remains a brilliant piece of effective epideictic

rhetoric. The address struck a popular chord in the American sensibility which still resonates today. Such a resonance could not endure without a sense of personal value, an internalized connection of identification with a set of commonly held values construed as moral values, existing within the listener. Nor could the speech have endured as an expression of an American ideal had that connection not been made at the time of its delivery. The rhetoric used assumes, in fact depends upon, an unquestionedacceptance of a set of principles and values to which the imagery and language expressively points. By the time of John Kennedy’s inaugural speech, the acceptance of these values was so complete that he proceeds from the intellectual position that these precepts and ideals are so self-evident in their worth that they constitute the naturalstate of human existence, if not the very definition of whatit means to be human.

The occasion of Kennedy’s address, obviously, was his inaugural into the Presidency. The circumstances surrounding his election and inauguration selected the topics covered in his speech and the decisions of his presidency. On the international scene, the cold war with the Soviet powers was at full rage. Eisenhower’s attempts to initiate a detente had failed because of the Gary Powers U-2 incident. As a result, the nuclear arms race had begun a new surge, with increasing amounts of the national budget

being diverted to maintain an offensive/defensive parity in nuclear weaponry. Castro had recently declared himself a socialist and had established an alliance with the Soviet powers, a move which would eventually lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Colonialism was in the throes of dying, with former European colonies gaining independence almost daily and sliding into political chaos and civil war almost as quickly. The African-American civil rights movement in the United States was gathering momentum, and white racist resistance was beginning to move from the congressional arena into the streets. In short, a sense of embattlement was beginning to mount within many of the members of the American society. But, within all this, the intellectual battle over the principles that would shape theAmerican sensibility were over. The Civil War had resolved the moral status of union within the American mind that had concerned Washington. Americans were a united people, even though the moral status of equality which had concerned Lincoln was still in want of resolution. Even so, African-Americans fought for their civil rights as Americans, basingthe morality of their fight within the precepts and values expressed by Washington 170 years earlier.

Of the three presidents studied here, Kennedy possessedthe most formal and traditional education. He attended private academies at both New Milford and Wallingford, Connecticut. He attended Princeton University for a year

before transferring to Harvard and earning his baccalaureate. He attended the Stanford University GraduateSchool of Business for one semester “but withdrew six monthslater because he did not like the study” (Capp 232). At this time, the tradition informing American education was far different from that informing the tradition of educationexperienced by Washington and his cabinet members. And, although Lincoln was primarily self-educated, the intellectual tradition which would have dictated the kinds of texts available to Lincoln in public and private libraries had changed as well. Even though Kennedy would have been introduced to the classics, especially in his years at the academies, his education would not have been centered on the classics, being more rounded in the modern sense through required instruction in the maths and sciences, with the liberal arts portion of his education shaped by an established British and a growing American literary tradition. All of this is evident in the rhetoric and content of Kennedy’s inaugural address.

The organization of Kennedy’s address is basically didactic, with the topic of each section “identified first and then expanded” (Capp 235). But underlying this didacticism is an unquestioned acceptance of the principles shaping the American ideal of character and government as moral that informs the entire speech. The very first paragraph, following a more or less pro forma opening

paragraph of greetings ending with the line, “For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago,” reads: “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the samerevolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God” (236). The sacredness of the “revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought” is clearly unquestioned, if not sanctified. The connection between divine providence and liberty is unquestionably assumed, or at least portrayed, as constitutive of the powerand authority of the state, and the power of abolition, a euphemism for elimination, for good or ill, now held by mortal man, is a divine power to which the beliefs that fueled the American revolution are connected. The construction of this connection occurs through a kind of hypallage, a transferred epithet, that occurs through a grammatical, but not logical agreement. The opening statement does not lead us logically to the “revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought,” but we go willinglyand accept the connection by bringing a global political context to the paragraph, along with all the ideological opposition that entailed at the time. Kennedy is working within the same rhetorical strategy evidenced in Lincoln’s

“Gettysburg Address.”

The internalization of the values Washington exhorted his audience to adopt and Lincoln relied upon for meaning have become so established by 1961 that Kennedy feels completely at ease in referring to those values as universally applicable to all humanity in all circumstances within the next paragraph:

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first

revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place,

to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passedto a

new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered

by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our

ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow

undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always

been committed, and to which we are committed today at home

and around the world (236).

The following portion of the text enumerates a series of pledges that remarkably positions the foreign policy of the

United States during the period well within the mandates laid down by George Washington in his farewell. But, after this enumeration of pledges, Kennedy presents three paragraphs that clearly illustrates the final forging of an American identity built upon the tripartite configuration set forth by Washington:

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, willrest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans hasbeen summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.  The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service arefound around the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call tobear arms,

though arms we need, not as a call to battle,though embattled we are,

but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’--a struggle against common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and globalalliance, north and south, east and west, that can assure a morefruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? (238-9).

Kennedy appears completely unselfconscious in his calling for a crusade, which is global in scope, against the ancient

biblical scourges, poverty and war, and elevating a uniquelyAmerican scourge to biblical status through association, tyranny, the antithesis of liberty. The main weapon againstthese scourges, aside from the implied divine righteousness of the cause, is the union of all mankind in the pursuit of the good life.

Finally, within this passage we see the completion of the transformation of an American identity into an American state of being, an aesthetic for existence, evidenced in thefirst paragraph quoted above. The statement, “Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty,” contrasted with Washington’s stance for the necessity of religious principles in the maintenance of good government, embodied in the question of “where is the security for property, reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths . . . ?,” shows national loyaltyhas taken on the character of a religious obligation by the time Kennedy delivers his oration. The testimony may be solicited generationally but the mute testimony of its beinggiven individually from a privately held conviction formulated within a belief of the American ideal as a transcendent truth is found in “[t]he graves of young Americans who answered the call to service . . . found around the globe.”

Without this understanding of the American ideal as a transcendent truth, the self-reflexive reflection demanded by Kennedy’s most famous passage in the address, “And so, myfellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country,” becomes meaningless, devolving into a reformulation of the ruler/ruled power hierarchy of classical government. The power of that quote for native Americans would have been lost on the international audience Kennedy was also addressing so the inclusion of the same concept restated in less culturally self-referencing language, but within the same chiasmatic construction, was necessary: “My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man” (239). The need to indicate the same ideal informing both calls through a naming was apparently not felt necessary in the one addressed to American citizens. The level of abstraction present in the formulation is very similar to the abstraction found throughout Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. The inherent meaning and power in the repetition of the second person possessive would be meaningful, on all levels of consciousness, only to those who understood the entire cultural/spiritual/intellectual context which the statement works within. Non-citizens, not having the same experience of the principles informing the statement, cannot access theemotional and uplifting power of the construction.

Finally, as further proof of the completion of this process of construction of an American aesthetic of being founded on the epistemologically unified conceptions of union, liberty, and the hand of Providence, and its internalization as identifying the morality of not only the American experience but American identity, can be found in Kennedy’s prolific use of metaphor. Meaning in metaphor is always culturally specific and epistemologically defined. When Kennedy says, “And let every other power know that thishemisphere intends to remain master of its own house,” or, “And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, or, “The energy, the faith, the devotion whichwe bring to this endeavor will light our country and all whoserve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world,” he is appealing to an aesthetic that assumes a common valuing and understanding of a shared moral experience for meaning.

The dearth of metaphor found in both Washington and Lincoln’s addresses is not purely a matter of style but a matter of aesthetics. An overarching conception for an American way of being had yet to be formulated in Washington’s time. The reference points for meaning were still being constructed within the frameworks of lifetimes partially lived as colonial British, or wholly lived as South Carolinians, Pennsylvanians, Moravians, etc. Within Lincoln’s time the framework for an American aesthetic

existed but was in construction and had been shattered by the secession of the South, throwing the validity of the whole into question. But, by Kennedy’s time, the framework had been articulated into an epistemological, if not ontological, whole and experienced as moral by four successive generations. The values underpinning the framework were moving out of an American isolation and assuming an authority for human universality. The necessityfor cooperation through union, valued within and establishedupon Christian principles, for the securing and preservationof liberty, which is considered the prerequisite for the good life, was no longer seen as an arguable possibility butan established fact. Thus, the rhetorical use of language in the three presidential orations judged most influential in the shaping of American political policy and the Americanpolitical consciousness contain a record of the development of an American way of being. The rhetorical devices and formats of each may be found in the older western classical tradition, but the employment of those devices reveals the development of a distinctively American aesthetic at work within each speech that shaped the American consciousness.

WORKS CITED

Bizzel, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Boston: St. Martin’s, 1990.

Capp, Glenn R. Famous Speeches in American History. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.

Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Wills, Gary. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon