I first heard about Steve Earle from my lovely girlfriend this fall. We were watching Ken Burns's "The Civil War" mini-series when they got to the story of Ghettysburg and particularly one Union Colonel, Joshua Chamberlain who was once a schoolteacher before he joined up with the 20th Maine and headed down to fight for the Union army. Chamberlain's 20th Maine held their position through great bravery and some luck, and at great cost of life in the crucial moments of one of the turning points in the Civil War. Chamberlain's personal bravery was shown again and again as the war continued on and this song is about a fictional soldier in Chamberlain's largely Irish, 20th Maine. I think there is something so powerful about this song, not only story it tells, but the sound of it, the sly interpolation of "Dixie" into the chorus, the marching strident beat of the whole thing. This song reminds me of a time that I visited the Lincoln Memorial in DC one night and was totally overcome with a feeling of pride and gratitude that had to do less with a country or a government, than with a land and a people, wild and varied and stupid and amazing and brave, so many things all in one. It felt like a great weight smashing into my chest, reading those words of Lincoln's, the Gettysburg address, and even more so his second Inaugural address, that there was a man once who thought of America like this, who asked us all to share his aspirations for the country. I still can't find the right words to describe the feeling I had, but I can still feel it like a distant echo inside of me when I think of that night at the memorial, and when I read Lincoln's words. Patriotism misses the mark, even stripped (as if it could be) of all of its myriad connotations. There isn't a single word that I know of to encapsulate the feeling. It is a fullness in my chest, like there is some understanding pouring into my heart at such a rate that it might burst. What that understanding is can only I think be implied from the eloquent lines of the address itself, so take a second and check it out. Like lots of true things, this feeling I think can't really be named or talked about all that clearly (see above sad attempt) but I think that this song is a good soundtrack for this feeling for me.
Abraham LincolnSecond Inaugural AddressSaturday, March 4, 1865Weeks of wet weather preceding Lincoln's second inauguration had caused Pennsylvania Avenue to become a sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of spectators stood in thick mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As he stood on the East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol dome over the President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his Administration throughout the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of office. In little more than a month, the President would be assassinated. |
 |
| Fellow-Countrymen: AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. | 1 |
| On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. | 2 |
| One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." | 3 |
| With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. |
Address from http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html
