News---Will Obama's Inaugural Procession Start in Gettysburg?

Obama Inaugural Procession To Start In Gettysburg?, Erin James, Evening Sun, December 5, 2008.

An established heritage organization wants Obama to begin his Jan. 20 inaugural procession to Washington, D.C., in Gettysburg - the northernmost point of Journey Through Hallowed Ground's 175-mile corridor through Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Journey Through Hallowed Ground President Cate Magennis Wyatt said the procession would give more people the opportunity to participate in the historic event and would fit into Obama's inauguration theme of "A New Birth of Freedom," which is derived from President Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address. The organization sent its proposal in a letter to Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee and has enlisted the help of state and local officials to lend the idea support. "We don't know if they're going to take us up on this, but we thought we would ask," Wyatt said.

Presidential Inaugural Committee spokeswoman Chris Mather said she did not know Thursday whether the proposal was being considered, however, and could not provide further information. The letter was signed by officials in the municipalities Obama would pass through, including Gettysburg Borough Council President Dick Peterson and Cumberland Township Manager Flo Ford. Peterson said the letter was signed about a month ago, and officials are now waiting for a response. He said a visit from Obama in Gettysburg "would be wonderful." "Whether it's coming to fruition is another thing," he said.

Ford said the municipal advisory committee, of which she and Peterson are members, was asked to support the idea by Journey Through Hallowed Ground staff. "I wouldn't have signed the letter if I didn't think it was a good idea," she said. Wyatt said the Journey Through Hallowed Ground has also reached out to Gettysburg Foundation President Robert Wilburn for help soliciting support from Gov. Ed Rendell. Foundation spokeswoman Dru Neil confirmed that a discussion between Wilburn and Journey staff had taken place but said no further action has yet been taken. The procession idea was partly inspired by Obama's reference to the Founding Fathers in his victory speech, Wyatt said. A history-themed inaugural procession seems to fit the president-elect, she said.

"That was basically in response to the fact that clearly the president-elect has a very keen and sobering appreciation for our history and our heritage," Wyatt said. If Obama and the inaugural committee accept the proposal, the president-elect would begin his procession in Gettysburg and travel the Hallowed Ground corridor on Route 15 through Maryland. The route would take him to the Dulles Toll Road and directly to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Wyatt said. Millions of people are planning to attend the inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, but most of them won't be anywhere near the event. A procession would allow more to participate, Wyatt said.

An Obama inaugural procession would not be the first in history. In 1993, President Clinton began a 120-mile procession to Washington from Monticello, Va., at the home of Thomas Jefferson. It never happened, but an Obama visit to Gettysburg had been a rumored possibility since the Illinois senator with similarities to President Lincoln decided to run for office nearly two years ago. But an inaugural procession to Washington would be significant not only to Gettysburg, Wyatt said. "It would be a big deal for everybody," she said.

Text Source: Evening Sun, December 5, 2008.

Image Source: New York Times

News---What Would Lincoln Do? If Barack Obama is looking for a model . . .

WWLD? (What would Lincoln Do?), Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune, November 9, 2008.

If Barack Obama is looking for a model as president-elect, Abraham Lincoln seems perfect. In a time of national crisis, with Southern states seceding from the Union, that earlier son of Illinois had to prepare himself for taking office—but also avoid making a misstep. It was his first test as a national leader.

So, what lessons can Obama learn from what Lincoln did—and didn't do—in the time between his election and inauguration?

To find out, the Tribune asked two Lincoln scholars, Harold Holzer, author of the newly published "Lincoln President-elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861," and James McPherson, author of the classic Civil War history tome "Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief," published in October.

Here's their lesson plan:

Lesson 1: Keep your cards close to your vest.

Although pressured to deal with the secession, Lincoln refused to say anything to placate Southern leaders before his inauguration. "They tried to get him to approve compromise measures, but he wouldn't do it," said Holzer. "He said, 'By no act or complicity of mine shall the Republican party become a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.' " McPherson said, "Lincoln was like Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression. He didn't want to commit himself ahead of time." As president, Lincoln had power that gave him leverage in negotiations. But not as president-elect.

Lesson 2: Avoid empty rhetoric.

On his way to the inauguration, Lincoln took an 11-day train trip with whistle stops at dozens of cities and towns along the way. Lincoln didn't want to tip his hand about his plans for the South, so he gave speeches filled with bromides. "They were meaningless remarks, and they came across to many people as taking the crisis too lightly," McPherson said.

Lesson 3: Court the opposition media.

"One of the first things Lincoln did was invite a reporter for the pro-Stephen Douglas New York Herald to spend time with him," said Holzer. "He was virtually embedded in his office for four months. The reporter, who at first doubted him, was writing positively about him by the end. It would be like Obama inviting Sean Hannity to spend a lot of time with him."

Lesson 4: Pick Cabinet members who have skills and knowledge you lack.

"Some of the people Lincoln appointed had a good deal more experience in the federal government and in administration than he had," McPherson said.

Lesson 5: Use your Cabinet to bring diversity into your administration.

"In Lincoln's day, diversity meant regional and political roots," Holzer said. The Republican Party had been created by former Democrats and Whigs, so Lincoln "had as many former Democrats as former Whigs" in his Cabinet, Holzer said. Also, he had representatives from the various regions in the nation. "Today, it's ethnic and gender diversity that's needed."

Lesson 6: Use your Cabinet appointments to unite your party behind you.

"Lincoln appointed four of his [Republican] presidential rivals to the Cabinet—Salmon Chase, William Seward, Edward Bates and Simon Cameron," said McPherson. "I suppose Hillary Clinton would be the parallel." In fact, he said Obama already moved in this direction by naming former primary opponent Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate.

Lesson 7: Get any resentment or bitterness off your chest in the first draft of your inaugural address—then cut it all out.

"Lincoln really poured it on in his first draft, and ended it with a line that the choice was between peace or the sword. But, in later drafts, he kept toning it down," Holzer said. "The final draft ended with the line about the 'better angels of our nature.' "

Lesson 8: Use your inaugural address to set the tone for your presidency.

Like many presidents before and since, Lincoln sent a message with his inaugural—that he would uphold the Union, even while trying to avoid civil war. "Lincoln used the inaugural to make clear that his administration would not accept the legitimacy of secession," McPherson said. "[Unless provoked,] the government would take no action against the South, and would follow a policy of encouraging Unionists. But he stood for the integrity of the nation, of the Union."

Text Source: Chicago Tribune

Image Souce: Library of Congress, February 1860 at the time of the Cooper Union Speech.

CWL: 1.) My daughter reports that Jon Stewart (Comedy Central) interviewed one of Obama's law professors. The professor said that two, tall, thin white guys from Illinois have been elected President: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama. 2.) It was nice to hear Lincoln quoted three times, I believe, in the victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago.

Off Topic: Picture This--- The Possibilty Of A Black President In The Foreground, American History In The Background

First Things , David W. Blight, History News Network, November 3, 2008.

“First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things,” declared Frederick Douglass on April 14, 1876, in Washington D. C., in the most extraordinary public address ever delivered by an African American to that date. Extraordinary for its argument and its audience. Douglass gave the dedication speech at the unveiling of the Freedman’s Memorial, the statue of a standing Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation in hand, breaking the chains of a kneeling slave. Attending the event were President Ulysses S. Grant, members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the president’s cabinet. No black orator had ever addressed such an official assembly. If elected President, Barack Obama will be the second African American to address such a powerful audience on inauguration day.

Douglass struck chords of civil religion, referring to the “majestic dome of the Capitol,” and the sacred “heights of Arlington” cemetery. It was in this oration that Douglass famously called his white fellow citizens Lincoln’s “children,” but he and his fellow blacks “only his stepchildren.” One hundred and thirty-two years later we can still debate the meaning of those familial metaphors.

As we contemplate the “first” of Barack Obama achieving the presidency of the United States, we should brace ourselves with a long view of our history. We should take deep breaths and imagine the long prelude of the thousands murdered for trying to vote during Reconstruction, the thousands lynched because of the poisonous fears of white supremacy. And we should remember the millions denied life chances during the prolonged night of Jim Crow. Only then can we help Senator Obama feel the weight of responsibility in becoming America’s ultimate “first thing.” Such remembrance is both burden and inspiration.

If elected, Obama will have too many pressing issues to face to bask in mists of sentiment. But every American, whether they choose to or not, owns this heritage of slavery and racism that forces us to contemplate such first things. Whether they are the white “real Americans” in Sarah Palin’s small towns, or the rest of the equally real people in pluralistic and cosmopolitan cities, we all breathe in this past.

In order to keep perspective, we might reflect on two expressions of the condition of American race relations nearly a century apart, one from W. E. B. Du Bois’s masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and the other from Obama himself in his speech on race of March 18, 2008. In Souls, Du Bois asks his readers to see race relations at the turn of the twentieth century in the South through “two figures” who typified the legacies of slavery and the Civil War:

The one a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a… ruined form, with hate in his eyes; -- and the other a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime quailed at that white master’s command, had bent in love over the cradles of his sons and daughters, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife, -- aye,too, at his behest had laid herself low to his lust, and borne a tawny man-child to the world….

Without a pause, Du Bois pressed the issue; “These were the saddest sights of that woeful day, and no man clasped the hands of these passing figures of the present-past; but hating they went to their long home, and hating their children’s children live today.”

At the end of his speech on race Obama tells a story. The organizer of his primary campaign in Florence, South Carolina was a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia. Ashley had grown up in poverty, her mother had contracted cancer when the girl was but nine years old, and she had survived on mustard and relish sandwiches while her mother lost her job and health insurance. At a campaign gathering, Ashley went around the room and asked all attending why they were there. Most mentioned a specific issue that especially animated their self-interest. Finally the ritual reached an elderly black man who had sat silently until asked why he was there. His answer was simple: “I am here because of Ashley.” As Obama admits, “by itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start.”

Obama’s two figures - the young white southern woman, born well after the sixties and who in her impoverished background should have become a Republican resenting blacks in the South, and the old black man who could not vote until after 1965 in South Carolina - reverse Du Bois’s earlier harrowing image of the old white man and old black woman. Obama shows us an alternative to the “children’s children” of Du Bois’s story. A new start? This election will test more than the changing metaphors of our racial condition. But “first things” are the stuff of real hope, and they can be grasped only through the long history that gives them meaning.

This election will severely test how much Americans grasp the past they are being asked to overcome. If we are ever to build a society where no one must play the role of political “stepchild,” it will demand the informed courage of millions of Ashley Baias and her cousins of many hues. History is never over.

Mr. Blight, teaches American history at Yale University and is author of A Slave No More; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.

CWL: William Faulkner may have said it best. "The past is not dead. It is not even passed."

Text Source: History News Network, November 3, 2008

Image Source: David Blight, W.E.B. Dubois