Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

A three-minute speech at a mass grave should not be able to reframe a nation’s purpose, yet the Gettysburg Address does exactly that. We sit down with Dr. Aaron Kushner to set the scene at Gettysburg just months after the battle, when the ground is still heavy with loss and Lincoln is only a supporting act before an audience that has already listened to hours of formal oratory. 

Then we slow the speech down and listen to how it works. We talk through the Gettysburg Address’s three-part structure, why its simple words are designed for the ear, and how Lincoln uses repetition and rhythm to make ideas stick. From “four score and seven” to “all men are created equal,” we explore why Lincoln ties the nation’s birth to 1776 and treats equality as a proposition that must be pursued rather than a victory lap Americans can take. 

The conversation turns to the Civil War as a stress test for democratic government and to Lincoln’s striking claim that we cannot truly dedicate or consecrate the ground with words alone. We dig into the speech’s religious imagery, the meaning of “under God,” and the challenge Lincoln hands to the living: finish the work so that government of the people does not perish from the earth. If you care about civic education, American history, or the moral logic of democracy, this close reading will give you new language for old lines. 

Subscribe for more deep dives into founding ideas and national turning points, share this with a friend who loves history, and leave a review. What line from the Gettysburg Address still hits you the hardest today?

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Transcript

Why Gettysburg Still Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Welcome back to Civics in the year. I am stoked to do this episode on the Gettysburg Address with Dr. Aaron Kushner. And the Gettysburg Address is not a long document. It's not a long speech. And so I personally think that this should be in classrooms regardless of upper elementary, middle school, and high school. So Gettysburg Address is delivered by Abraham Lincoln, and it's one of his most famous speeches. So famous that it's actually on the Lincoln Memorial. So this is November 19th, 1863. You know, the Union victory at Gettysburg is this key moment in the Civil War. And President Lincoln offers this brief speech as a dedication to a new national cemetery near the Gettysburg Battlefield. So, Dr. Kushner, can you kind of set the scene for us of this Gettysburg address?

Setting The Scene After Battle

SPEAKER_01 1:49

We're there at Gettysburg, a few months removed from the battle. The battlefield's been cleaned. It took a very long time because there were 51,000 more than that, over 51,000 casualties at Gettysburg on both sides. The Union Army had 23,049 casualties. The Confederacy had somewhere between 23 and 28,000. We're not sure of the exact numbers. This is a major, major affair, three-day battle. Lincoln is not the featured speaker at Gettysburg, but Edward Everett, who was a former senator, governor Massachusetts, who gave a very good, by all accounts, speech. It was close to three hours long. He was noted as a public orator, public figure, supporter of the Union. And he talked about just about everything in that time. Lincoln gave three minutes, two and a half minutes speech. And as we'll talk about in a moment, somewhat ironically said that the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, and yet here we are talking about what Lincoln. So I guess he was half right because nobody remembers Everett's speech. I don't. I've read it and I don't.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I didn't even hear about him until you just said it.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Oh, yeah. No, he was he was the featured, yeah. And it's a fine speech, but it doesn't capture what Lincoln's captures. So let's let's talk about that. Uh a brief note about the text itself, something that you can use in classrooms, something that I've used in the classroom, something that was taught to me in graduate school in the classroom. The Gettysburg address is short, but there's there's a purpose to its structure. There are three paragraphs, and each paragraph is set in a different tense. The first paragraph is in the past tense, the second paragraph is present tense, and the third paragraph is future, is looking forward. And the tenses correspond with the length of each. The first paragraph is only a sentence, so not really a paragraph for you grammar English teachers. Very brief. The past is we're we're forgetting it. We've forgotten it. This is intentional. The present is a decent sized paragraph, and most of the Gettysburg addresses in that third section. Also of note, in that these are small words. These are not academic this is not an academic text. Lincoln is writing very simply so that everyone can understand. Something that we might be struck by had we been there, had we read, if you go and you, for some reason, want to read Everett's speech. Again, it's it's good, it's fine. There's a lot of big words. It's a fancy speech. A bit about why it's so appealing to us is his construction of it. There are a lot of repetition. He uses the words dedicate over and over and over. That word dedicate comes up a good number of times in this speech. There's also triplets for of the people, by the people, for the people. This use of poetic repetition is just it makes it easy to memorize. And again, the use of triplets coincides with the religious imagery of the Gettysburg Address. There is a lot of religious imagery here. And I we'll we'll break that down as we go through it. But I wanted to highlight some of those features of this address before we get started.

The Speech’s Simple Architecture

SPEAKER_00 5:39

And a lot of, I think when we think about Lincoln, a lot of, you know, what he said, like you just said, the by the people or of the people, by the people, for the people, for scoring seven years ago. There's a lot of kind of sound bites from the Gettysburg Address that most Americans are familiar with. And they, but they might not be familiar with the entirety of the address. Should we start with the first paragraph, the past? I I love so I just I love Lincoln as an orator and as a writer because it feels like he just he does. He wants to connect with people. He's not looking to, and there's nothing wrong with academic writing, obviously, but he in this is just really trying to connect with the people, connect with the nation. And I do have a really quick question for you. And we've talked about this in a couple previous episodes. Sometimes when we read things, when we talk about primary sources, they're meant to just be read. Sometimes they're meant to be heard. So on this one, what do you think? Is it meant to be more heard or is it meant to be read?

SPEAKER_01 6:51

So I I love this. I love this question. I believe it is meant to be heard. And so every time I teach it in class, I have someone read it aloud, and I take the newspaper report of the Gettysburg Address, which includes the applause breaks. And so I find those fascinating too. So I interrupt the student, the student will get up there and read it, and I say I warn them ahead of time. I'm going to interrupt you where the audience actually interrupted Lincoln with applause. And I think it's a great exercise. The students get into it, but that's part of the reason the wording is so simple. These are a lot of one-syllable words in here. It's easy to hear, and yet they rhyme their poetic symmetry. It's a sort of a beautiful construction. So I think, in the spirit of the Gettysburg Address, that we should read it slash listen to it as part of this podcast.

Meant To Be Heard Aloud

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Okay. So I will go ahead and read the first sentence paragraph, however you want to say it. And then Dr. Krishner, you can give us some annotations and some things behind it. So fourscore 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.

Line By Line Through Paragraph One

SPEAKER_01 8:11

By four score, if you aren't familiar, a score was 20 years. So by four score and seven years ago, Lincoln means 87 years ago, which situates the American founding at 1776, not 1787 with the Constitution, or 1789 with the Constitution, or wherever. It's a very deliberate intentional phrasing by Lincoln to say that our founding as a nation, again, as a united whole, is actually when we all signed on to that declaration of independence, not before and not after that. This is something that was contentious during Lincoln's Stephen Douglas debates, during Lincoln's entire career, and certainly during the war itself, with the southern states seceding and many of them claiming, well, the declaration's a lie, or that when we signed the Constitution, the 10th and 9th Amendments basically give us an out from this union. We can just leave whenever we want, we're sovereign, right? Okay. By our fathers, we're meant to recognize the Lord's Prayer in there. So that's Matthew 6, 9 through 13, giving this right off the bat a sort of sense that, okay, there is something spiritual going on here. When we say our fathers, I mean it's just adding a letter to our father, a new nation, an understanding that we are not little individual countries that don't really like each other and don't really get along. We may not like each other and not really get along, but that fundamentally we are one whole, even with our unique federal system. By conceived in liberty, we've spoken about this before. By liberty, we understand a right to stable boundaries to guide our actions, to the stable rule of law. This is the opposite of tyranny. And what is tyranny? Tyranny is a king, your neighbor, or even yourself, just doing things on a whim. It's arbitrary power, it is capriciousness. So if a king can change the law in a day because they feel like it, well, that's not liberty because you're not guaranteed the stability that people need to flourish. And the same with the self, and Lincoln has this very much in mind, a person who would claim to own human property is fundamentally a tyrant. This is echoed in Frederick Douglass's and countless other abolitionist writings, that this is the opposite of liberty, because liberty is stable and predictable rule of law, and if you are governed by an individual, this is unlikely to result in true liberty or freedom. In fact, it's impossible. And finally, dedicated to the this this proposition that all men are created equal. Proposition, we might do well to think of this as this is this is a proposal, folks. This is a dissertation prospectus, if you will. This is not something that is guaranteed. This is an unrealized goal, right? This is dedicated to the proposition. So we're dedicated, okay. We we are firmly intended to try to find it or get there or realize it, but it's not there. And what is this? All men are created equal. A universal truth in the declaration, known to us by reason, but that requires a sort of faith to actually see it or realize it, in that we are not self-creating beings, which plays back into that liberty element. Because we are not self-creating, we can't make up our own laws because we don't know what's best for us. Our creator knows what's best for us. This is sort of that imagery that Lincoln is giving to us here in this the past paragraph.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Is there a reason that liberty in this paragraph is a capital L?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, I think to highlight its importance as the proper understanding of liberty. Stephen A. Douglas, whom Lincoln debated, who had passed away by this point in the war. He didn't die in the war, he got sick. But he had thrown around different understandings of the term liberty. And Lincoln had encountered all these different understandings of liberty, many of them being for the uh many in the South, Alexander Stevens, well, what whatever we say is liberty. Popular public opinion, the majority rule, whatever the majority says can be the source of liberty, right? Popular sovereignty in Douglas's formation can be a source of liberty. But that's not enough for Lincoln, who, as we talked in the Lyceum Address episode, identified well, what is mob rule? Mob rule is basically the tyranny of people claiming to define liberty for others. We can't do that, Lincoln says, because of human inf or human fallibility. It prevents us from ruling over others. And yet that's literally what's happening in the United States. All these people are claiming to rule over other people.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

So is there anything else in that first paragraph before we move to our second paragraph at that time in the present?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

If you have something specific, I think maybe the only thing we didn't talk about yet is the conceived business, which you might think of as the life of the nation, at least for Lincoln, right? The life of the nation began at conception. And that conception is the conscious, rational choice to pursue equality with the signing of the declaration, that these people are and of right ought to be free and independent.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

And when you talked about like the our father, is that the the Lord's Prayer? Is that because when you said it, the Catholic in me started to recite it in my head.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yeah, I think that I I think based on what he says later in the the address here, that Lord's prayer imagery comes more to the fore. He's setting us up here in this address for consecration. They're there to consecrate a battlefield, and yet they can't. They actually can't do it because what actually consecrates it's is blood, right? The struggle. So in consecrate in the sense of making to make holy, to set apart, to make sacred. So I think that that Lord's prayer imagery sets us up for a dual view of America. On the one hand, for Lincoln, there is a a real sense of gratitude that we need to have for the people who started this country. This is America 250 Year, this is the America 250 podcast. I I think this is this address, probably more than many other addresses, really speaks to that project. But in another sense, there is an understanding that Americans ought to be cognizant of not just their their fathers, the founding fathers, who were humans, right? Fallible but also their creator. Because without a creator, without a single creator, I should say, then maybe we aren't all equal. How else could we really be all equal if we don't have a single creator? Because one creator might have uh had a bad day and you know, sort of, you know, didn't give a hundred percent into you know making the people of Pennsylvania become my home state. Something like that. So I think this these things flow together for Lincoln, who his whole life, you know, his as a young man sort of flirts with Christianity and and uses it, you know, in his speeches as a matter of course. But during the war, and especially as he as we ramp up to the end of the war, here's a man who seems genuinely wrestling with the divine and who really wants to understand what's going on here. There is something going on with this war. It is and I mean think of Gettysburg itself, July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. You couldn't have drawn this up, you know. There's something so the other one is Antietam, which takes place on, I believe, the anniversary of the Constitution. Right? It's on Constitution Day, September 17th.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

It's like it's scripted almost.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I'm pretty sure that's Antietam. Anyway. If that's not correct, you can edit that out. But yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty darn sure that's that's the case.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

It's just so like July 4th. I mean, when we talk about things like that, we've talked about you know, founders that passed away on July 4th. Like it's such a three, it's such three. There's yes, Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe. Monroe.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yep.

Civil War As A National Test

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Oh my gosh. Okay, let's go to the I feel like we could talk about this for hours. Let's move to our second paragraph. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

This is a civil war in Lincoln's Lyceum address and in other instances. He's believed for a very long time that America could never be conquered by another country, that it would have to die by suicide is his language. It would have to destroy itself because it is such a radical and fragile thing. But this is a civil war. If you want to think politically, Lincoln is saying this for a for a reason. This is not two different countries, the South didn't actually secede. So that's definitely in here as well. Civil war. It's not a war between states who are independent from one another, not a war between the states, not a war of two competing countries. No, this is a civil war. We ourselves are testing the nation's faith and birthright. Okay, so we were conceived in liberty, dedicated to a proposition. Okay, we didn't achieve it at the founding, we were dedicated to it. In blood, by the way. Although Lincoln doesn't necessarily say that, the founding is a war, right? It is in some sense a civil war at the revolution. Right? Englishmen are fighting Englishmen, colonists are fighting the mother country. So there is blood at the founding. Lincoln is saying here that, well, can any country dedicated to this actually succeed? This was the great proposition, and now we're gonna test it and see if it actually can. The great battlefield Gettysburg is Link uh excuse me, Lee's second invasion of the North, and by far is more successful one. He gets all the way up into Pennsylvania, and he's defeated pretty soundly. Like this is a this is a definitive victory for the north. Immense casualties. I mentioned the casualty numbers earlier, and they're close, closely similar to each other, except that we need to keep in mind the Union Army's strength was roughly 100,000 total, 104 something, I believe. And the Confederacy's strength was somewhere between 68 and 75,000. So the losses, although similar, way more devastating for the Confederacy, and it's a full it's a full retreat. So this is a special battlefield because it marked again this a real invasion of the north and a real victory for the Union Army. We are here, present tense, to dedicate, and that's a good thing. Well, why is it a good thing? Because we do want to we we do we ought to want to continue to pursue this proposition, but there's a way in which and we'll talk about this in the next paragraph, there's a way in which this is actually again, also, this is You brought this up. I think this is interesting. With a Lyceum address where Lincoln is Mr. Reason rational thought. We need to sit down and calmly think about a civil religion. By this point, he seems to have totally moved on, grown up and matured. He's only 28 when he did the Lyceum address. I mean, come on. Way more mature than I was at 28, but still only 28. And now Lincoln's like, okay. Yeah, it's actually maybe not enough. There needs to be an authentic spiritual component. And he's sort of recognizing that in the desire to dedicate a portion of this field, that resting place of dedicating the cemetery for those who gave their lives that the nation might live. Again, we see more religious imagery. John 15, 13, greater love hath no man, then he would lay down his life for another. It is altogether fitting and proper. This is a good thing that we're doing. And yet he doesn't end with an ellipsis, but it almost seems like he is ending with an ellipsis.

Words Versus Blood Consecration

SPEAKER_00 23:57

So I do want to move to that paragraph. I feel like that's a good like thing because when I've read this before, it does feel like there should be an ellipsis, or you know, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. And then this next paragraph starts with but in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they fought, which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, 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. I get chills every time I read that because it's very, I just I feel like he is very deferential to the men who died for this. And you know, and I understand that he's, you know, they're dedicating a cemetery, but he and I feel like at this part in you know the war, Lincoln is I don't want to say beat down, but the awesomeness, and I don't mean that in a good way, but of what has happened in our nation has really weighed him down as a leader and as a person.

The World Stakes Of Equality

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Well, absolutely. He's suffered personal loss in his immediate family. He's suffered defeat after defeat. He suffered two we call them invasions of the north, but you've incursions north around Washington. The capital itself has been threatened from day one, which is why Lincoln suspends habeas corpus to keep Maryland in the Union in the first place. This has been just one stressful presidency, to say the least. And you can see it on his face. We talked about this last time, too, I believe, but the images of Lincoln every year of the war, how he just ages ten years every couple of months. It weighs on him. And because he is such a contemplative person, he's trying to make sense of these Lincoln has all these letters to his commanding officers instructing them basically to you know the the punishment for yeah, I think abandoning abandoning their post. Yeah, leaving the army, returning home, right? So you have a lot of young soldier boys in the Union Army who are running home, the horrors of this war, they're trying to escape. And you know, if you uh abandon your post, the punishment is death, right? Military tribunal, and then they shoot you. Deserters, deserters, that's the word. There's all these deserters, and Lincoln just over and over tells his commanding officers just let him go. No more, no more killing. Like, let's let's be done with this. So the whole the whole process is is really weighing on him. I love in the Lincoln movie that scene where Lincoln visits the military hospital and he makes an effort to know all their names and just to care for them. It's really the kind of man that Lincoln was. He wanted to connect with people and he wanted to understand why things were happening. So, to the paragraph, right? We're dedicating with words can only get us so far. Reason, human reason can only take us so far for Lincoln. Look where it took us. It took us to civil war. There, we have to appeal to something else. There has to be something else going on. And look what happened here. The men who struggled, he uses the word struggle, the living and dead who struggled here, so not necessarily the just the dead, but also the living too who shed blood, right? Okay, so this harkens back to the covenant, this harkens back to the old testament with the sacrificial lambs, harkens back to Christ's sacrifice and the altar, right? This is we're we're meant to think of this very sacramentally almost. We can't do this, and again, the triplets, which he'll end this paragraph with, too. We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. They've consecrated it far beyond our poor power to add or detract, at least not with words, right? Because then we'll we'll get to this. Blood is necessary to make these things holy. But why do we why do we want to make it holy? Like why why is this a goal? Well, to achieve that again, that holy proposition, which human reason can't get us to. Back in the first paragraph, right? All men are created equal. Look, Lincoln's like, well, I mean, look, human reason cannot take us to a place where we can really understand that all people are equal. It's failed over and over. The way to get there, or a way to get there, is to understand a creator, and there's something spiritual and divine, basically to see through the eyes of faith, right? The national faith. So it's good that we do this, that we try with our reason to accept this and to pursue it, but that sacrifice is what will take us there. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. That's again kind of hilarious because we all know this. I had one course where a student I asked them to read this, they stood up and they recited it.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

And I think they only there are schools that have them like this. Isn't very long to memorize.

Under God And A New Birth

SPEAKER_01 31:01

No, it's not. Yeah, he he was he was great. I think he only missed one word. He was fantastic. He did it with gusto too. So I think that's how it's meant to be meant to be read. But it the world, he's talking about the world now, which I think is is interesting. Because the like the first paragraph, right? It's all about America. We're just here doing this. By the third paragraph, he's talking about the world. Why on earth is he talking about the world? Why on earth? But it's because this proposition is universal, right? So he's echoing that sentiment in the declaration, which suggests that all men, this isn't Americans, it's not Georgians or Virginians are created equal. Everybody. Everyone, and this is really radical and tough to get to. It can never forget what they did here. And I I think he means that both literally and figuratively, or spiritually almost, because literally, this is a humongous battle, major political geopolitical implications. The the there were other European countries who had representatives at Gettysburg on the southern side. Arthur Fremantle is probably the most famous. He was a one of the British, he's a British soldier who was there shadowing Lee in Longstreet, and he was like, I like the Confederacy. And he has this diary of three months a couple months and three months in the southern states, and just talking about how great the Confederacy is, loves the Southern culture, and he thinks though Gettysburg is a set, he's at Gettysburg. He's like, Gettysburg was a setback, but I think they're still gonna win. Then he leaves like a couple months later, before the end. Anyway, there are huge geopolitical implications here, because European nations are literally at the battlefield watching to see what happens, and hey, if the South is gonna win, maybe we come in on their side. You know, there's all sorts of things going on. There's that. But also, if this proposition can be, in a sense, tested and proven in fire to be defensible by a free people who want to be free, well, that is going to change the world. That's going to do a lot of good in the world. But first, it w we have to we have to win. It is for us the living to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they've advanced. So even though they have consecrated the ground, they've made it holy with their struggle, with the shedding of blood. It's not done. I mean, clearly, the the war is not done, the physical war, but also the great battle, the great struggle. I think he uses struggle intentionally. The great struggle in human history. Are human beings equal? This has been a obviously and still is a huge struggle. It's unfinished, it's undone, it's undone in it's not done in America, it's not done anywhere. Who needs to be dedicated to the work? Well, it's us, it's the living. And we need to be dedicated to liberty. This takes us back to him in the Lyceum address, saying that look, to really teach the love of liberty, you need to have a sense of a certain humility in yourself to obey the law. And that's not just a slavish obey obedience without thinking. No, it's a it's a clear, clean understanding that if I don't obey this law and no one else does, no one is secure. If I think myself above the law, I think myself above other people. Right. So the law is is actually quite a nice way for us to understand that we're all equal. And again, this can be as simple as the crosswalk. Wait till it says go, right? If if it's if you are above the law, I'm gonna walk, potentially get hit by a car just just because, right? I mean, it's my time is more important. It's not the law that matters, not the specifics of the law, the court, like there are bad laws. Lincoln talks about this quite a bit, but it's the idea of law. And so to get dedicate ourselves to this proposition that all men are created equal, we have to appreciate liberty. The great task, again, remaining before us, is both. We have to beat the South, you have to beat their army. Meade after Gettysburg doesn't pursue for a lot of reasons. And he's not entirely faulted by Lincoln and others for this, although he does lose, you know, in charge of the Union Army, the Army of the Potomac. But also this pursuing equality. We see from this honored dead imagery again, so 1 Thessalonians 4 13 through 18. We ought to devote ourselves to this cause, which is both physical and spiritual. We highly resolve, we seriously reorient ourselves, we have a firm intention of the will. We need the will, we need our reason, but we need our reason to sort of lead us to that faith which is complementary to it, in Lincoln's understanding. And then that's sort of the big part. This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom. Obviously, there's there's so much from scripture that Lincoln is drawing upon. One of the a cool gift my sister-in-law got me for Christmas a couple years ago was Lincoln's devotional. So we have the little handbook devotional that Lincoln carried around with him and had with him during his presidency, which was you know a fascinating thing to see what Lincoln was drawing from and read. When we think of new birth of freedom, we think John 3 3, we think Galatians 5-1, John eight, 36, and so on and so on. You must be born again. Submission to God's will. This understanding of under God. So we get the I believe it's Eisenhower that intends to be. Yeah, the pledge comes much, much later. Much later. But this under God imagery we see here, I believe first. I'm not sure of, I'm not certain of any other earlier. I'm sure there might be, so don't quote me on that. But this is the earliest that I know of where the president at least is using that under God in this specific context. What is this under God? We go back to liberty, uh, the predominant faith in the United States at the time, of course, is several iterations of Protestant Christianity. Calvinism is very large. The Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, all these. The idea of these Christian denominations was that we learn liberty by relationship with God because submission to God's commandments through relationship actually allows us through grace to control our own passions. So we ourselves, subjected individually to law, are able to better love our neighbors. And so that's what Lincoln's drawing out here by under God. And what better way than to love our neighbors than by to dedicate ourselves to the proposition that all men are created equal? So popular sovereignty, this form of government of the people, by the people, for the people, is fragile, difficult, must be preserved. And we can do that by dedicating ourselves physically and spiritually to its pursuit.

Final Takeaways And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 39:42

You're right, it it comes up in Eisenhower adding one nation under God, but under God peace to the pledge. But it's very, it's very interesting to me to see how you know Lincoln as a person, he had his devotional, he had things that he drew from and that were, you know, in speeches like this, an incredibly important thing because now he's looking at a nation that has been through it. And how are we going to start to put this back together? Dr. Fisher, you rock. Thank you so much for going through this with us, annotating it with us, and really giving us a look into Lincoln's mind. You are so appreciated.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

As are you. This is a great podcast, great effort. Thank you very much.