Category: Bulletin

From Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 35

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought and talked only of examinations.

"It doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over," said Anne. "Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to — a whole winter of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so important."

Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important indeed — far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on them — as the girls truly thought theirs did — you could not regard them philosophically.

"I've lost seven pounds in the last two weeks," sighed Jane. "It's no use to say don't worry. I WILL worry. Worrying helps you some — it seems as if you were doing something when you're worrying. It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen's all winter and spending so much money."

"I don't care," said Josie Pye. "If I don't pass this year I'm coming back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship."

"That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie," laughed Anne, "but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are poking their heads up in Lovers' Lane, it's not a great deal of difference whether I win the Avery or not. I've done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the 'joy of the strife.' Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don't talk about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark beech-woods back of Avonlea."

"What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?" asked Ruby practically.

Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth's own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years — each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.

From Anne of the Island, Chapter XIV. (Two young women face the reality of death.)

THE SUMMONS

Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis’ garden after the day had crept lingeringly through it and was gone. It had been a warm, smoky summer afternoon. The world was in a splendor of out-flowering. The idle valleys were full of hazes. The woodways were pranked with shadows and the fields with the purple of the asters.

Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the White Sands beach that she might spend the evening with Ruby. She had so spent many evenings that summer, although she often wondered what good it did any one, and sometimes went home deciding that she could not go again.

Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White Sands school was given up—“her father thought it better that she shouldn’t teach till New Year’s”—and the fancy work she loved oftener and oftener fell from hands grown too weary for it. But she was always gay, always hopeful, always chattering and whispering of her beaux, and their rivalries and despairs. It was this that made Anne’s visits hard for her. What had once been silly or amusing was gruesome, now; it was death peering through a wilful mask of life. Yet Ruby seemed to cling to her, and never let her go until she had promised to come again soon. Mrs. Lynde grumbled about Anne’s frequent visits, and declared she would catch consumption; even Marilla was dubious.

“Every time you go to see Ruby you come home looking tired out,” she said.

“It’s so very sad and dreadful,” said Anne in a low tone. “Ruby doesn’t seem to realize her condition in the least. And yet I somehow feel she needs help—craves it—and I want to give it to her and can’t. All the time I’m with her I feel as if I were watching her struggle with an invisible foe—trying to push it back with such feeble resistance as she has. That is why I come home tired.”

But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly. Ruby was strangely quiet. She said not a word about parties and drives and dresses and “fellows.” She lay in the hammock, with her untouched work beside her, and a white shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders. Her long yellow braids of hair—how Anne had envied those beautiful braids in old schooldays!—lay on either side of her. She had taken the pins out—they made her head ache, she said. The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her pale and childlike.

The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling the clouds around her. Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance. Just beyond the Gillis homestead was the church, with the old graveyard beside it. The moonlight shone on the white stones, bringing them out in clear-cut relief against the dark trees behind.

“How strange the graveyard looks by moonlight!” said Ruby suddenly. “How ghostly!” she shuddered. “Anne, it won’t be long now before I’ll be lying over there. You and Diana and all the rest will be going about, full of life—and I’ll be there—in the old graveyard—dead!”

The surprise of it bewildered Anne. For a few moments she could not speak.

“You know it’s so, don’t you?” said Ruby insistently.

“Yes, I know,” answered Anne in a low tone. “Dear Ruby, I know.”

“Everybody knows it,” said Ruby bitterly. “I know it—I’ve known it all summer, though I wouldn’t give in. And, oh, Anne”—she reached out and caught Anne’s hand pleadingly, impulsively—“I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die.”

“Why should you be afraid, Ruby?“ asked Anne quietly.

“Because—because—oh, I’m not afraid but that I’ll go to heaven, Anne. I’m a church member. But—it’ll be all so different. I think—and think—and I get so frightened—and—and—homesick. Heaven must be very beautiful, of course, the Bible says so—but, Anne, it won’t be what I’ve been used to.”

Through Anne’s mind drifted an intrusive recollection of a funny story she had heard Philippa Gordon tell—the story of some old man who had said very much the same thing about the world to come. It had sounded funny then—she remembered how she and Priscilla had laughed over it. But it did not seem in the least humorous now, coming from Ruby’s pale, trembling lips. It was sad, tragic—and true! Heaven could not be what Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable. Anne wondered helplessly what she could say that would help her. Could she say anything? “I think, Ruby,” she began hesitatingly—for it was difficult for Anne to speak to any one of the deepest thoughts of her heart, or the new ideas that had vaguely begun to shape themselves in her mind, concerning the great mysteries of life here and hereafter, superseding her old childish conceptions, and it was hardest of all to speak of them to such as Ruby Gillis—“I think, perhaps, we have very mistaken ideas about heaven—what it is and what it holds for us. I don’t think it can be so very different from life here as most people seem to think. I believe we’ll just go on living, a good deal as we live here—and be ourselves just the same—only it will be easier to be good and to—follow the highest. All the hindrances and perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly. Don’t be afraid, Ruby.”

“I can’t help it,” said Ruby pitifully. “Even if what you say about heaven is true—and you can’t be sure—it may be only that imagination of yours—it won’t be just the same. It can’t be. I want to go on living here. I’m so young, Anne. I haven’t had my life. I’ve fought so hard to live—and it isn’t any use—I have to die—and leave everything I care for.” Anne sat in a pain that was almost intolerable. She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said was so horribly true. She was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life—the things that pass—forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing from one dwelling to the other—from twilight to unclouded day. God would take care of her there—Anne believed—she would learn—but now it was no wonder her soul clung, in blind helplessness, to the only things she knew and loved.

Ruby raised herself on her arm and lifted up her bright, beautiful blue eyes to the moonlit skies.

“I want to live,” she said, in a trembling voice. “I want to live like other girls. I—I want to be married, Anne—and—and—have little children. You know I always loved babies, Anne. I couldn’t say this to any one but you. I know you understand. And then poor Herb—he—he loves me and I love him, Anne. The others meant nothing to me, but he does—and if I could live I would be his wife and be so happy. Oh, Anne, it’s hard.”

Ruby sank back on her pillows and sobbed convulsively. Anne pressed her hand in an agony of sympathy—silent sympathy, which perhaps helped Ruby more than broken, imperfect words could have done; for presently she grew calmer and her sobs ceased.

“I’m glad I’ve told you this, Anne,” she whispered. “It has helped me just to say it all out. I’ve wanted to all summer—every time you came. I wanted to talk it over with you—but I couldn’t. It seemed as if it would make death so sure if I said I was going to die, or if any one else said it or hinted it. I wouldn’t say it, or even think it. In the daytime, when people were around me and everything was cheerful, it wasn’t so hard to keep from thinking of it. But in the night, when I couldn’t sleep—it was so dreadful, Anne. I couldn’t get away from it then. Death just came and stared me in the face, until I got so frightened I could have screamed.”

“But you won’t be frightened any more, Ruby, will you? You’ll be brave, and believe that all is going to be well with you.”

“I’ll try. I’ll think over what you have said, and try to believe it. And you’ll come up as often as you can, won’t you, Anne?”

“Yes, dear.”

“It—it won’t be very long now, Anne. I feel sure of that. And I’d rather have you than any one else. I always liked you best of all the girls I went to school with. You were never jealous, or mean, like some of them were. Poor Em White was up to see me yesterday. You remember Em and I were such chums for three years when we went to school? And then we quarrelled the time of the school concert. We’ve never spoken to each other since. Wasn’t it silly? Anything like that seems silly now. But Em and I made up the old quarrel yesterday. She said she’d have spoken years ago, only she thought I wouldn’t. And I never spoke to her because I was sure she wouldn’t speak to me. Isn’t it strange how people misunderstand each other, Anne?”

“Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,” said Anne. “I must go now, Ruby. It’s getting late—and you shouldn’t be out in the damp.”

“You’ll come up soon again.”

“Yes, very soon. And if there’s anything I can do to help you I’ll be so glad.”

“I know. You have helped me already. Nothing seems quite so dreadful now. Good night, Anne.”

“Good night, dear.”

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different—something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.

C.S. Lewis dedicates his classic The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to his goddaughter Lucy with the following words:

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. 

I’m not sure I ever reached an age when I considered myself “too old for fairy tales,” but there have certainly been seasons in which other things seemed more important. Pursuing an English major and Classical Education minor at a liberal arts college, I was up to my eyes in Aquinas and Aristotle, Faulkner and de Tocqueville. My dorm room was infested with Greek flashcards. Books that I had read, highlighted, and tabbed piled up—books that I hadn’t read piled up higher. (I used to joke that the only thing I got from my English major was a stronger grasp of how many things I had not read.)

Counterintuitively, it was around that time that I started picking up my childhood books again. Not only the fairy tales like The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but also the books that had taught me, as a girl, what girlhood was: Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden. I developed a habit of reading a few chapters of these long-forgotten childhood classics before I fell asleep at night. Somehow, I knew it was precisely what I needed. Over the years, I have turned to children’s literature again and again, and developed more articulate ideas on why this practice was so fruitful.

Children’s literature is simple. 

I first started reading children’s books because they were the books I had on hand, and they didn’t feel intimidating. Their simple language was easy to read after a day of slogging away at a medieval theology paper in the library. I already knew what was going to happen in these books, and that was somehow soothing, making them perfect bedtime reading.

Many of us have favorite books from childhood we’d love to revisit, or childhood classics we never got to read. Unlike some other classics we may wish we had read (War and Peace is my personal nemesis), children’s literature is easy to “catch up on.” If you have your own children, you can even read books with them that you wish you had read yourself, enriching both your and their experience.

In its simplicity, children’s literature reminds us that literature does not need to be complex and wordy in order to have deep reservoirs of meaning. Especially those of us who dwell in lofty academic spheres sometimes need this reminder—the simplest way of saying something is often the best way.

Children’s literature is (or should be) moral. 

Admittedly, children’s literature, especially the classics, can be a tiny bit moralistic. Often the lessons meant to be drawn from it—being happy without wealth, for example, or caring for those around us—can be a little bit on-the-nose.

But when I returned to children’s literature as an adult, I felt that touch of moralism was a good corrective. Sara Crewe’s patience in A Little Princess, the healing powers of human connection as depicted in The Secret Garden, Anne Shirley’s indefatigable enthusiasm—I felt all these traits reawakening my desire for a beautiful life, just as they are meant to do for children. It was a fruitful moment to reflect on the woman I had meant to become when I had been formed by these incredible characters—and the woman I was actually becoming.

I certainly don’t think all literature should be as morally simple as these “fairy tales” and formative children’s books. But it can be helpful to return to the basic categories of good and evil as they are laid out in the books we read to children—if only because they can help us discern good and evil in other books, and even in our own lives. It’s easy for me, as an adult sophisticate, to justify my impatience or envy or discontent. But when I’m faced with a children’s book that explains in simple and compelling terms that it is better to be patient and kind and grateful, I have to feel a little silly. I knew as a child that these things were true, and I know it as an adult too.

Children’s literature awakens our wonder for life. 

When we are children, everything is new. It is always funny to me to revisit a book I read as a young child and understand a turn of phrase or description that I never understood before, because I didn’t have enough context for it. More frequently, though, reading children’s literature renews my wonder at life because it affords the perspective of a child who is experiencing it all for the very first time.

Whether it is Mary running all over the garden with Dickon and discovering that the rose bushes are alive underneath all their old, rotten branches, or Anne accidentally dyeing her hair green, or Polly and Digory exploring the rafters of a whole row of houses, children’s literature reminds me that life is extremely interesting, after all. It can be easy to forget this in the daily slog of adulthood, when one day seems very much like another. In a children’s book, every day is a new step in an adventure.

Over the years, my own adventure has led me through a master’s in theology and a Ph.D. in Theology, the Imagination, and the Arts, and now I’m lucky enough to be reading “fairy tales again” as part of my daily work.

As a reading guide for an app called Read With Me, I’m currently taking a group of people through Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, a classic I’ve read many times. Still, every day new things jump off the pages. If you want to make reading children’s literature a part of your life, you’d be welcome to join us. I’m also including a list of my favorite children’s classics, both those that are well-known and those that are a bit less well-known, if you want to build a children’s literature reading practice of your own!

• The Hobbit
• The Chronicles of Narnia 
• Winnie the Pooh
• An Episode of Sparrows 
• Little Women
• Little Men
• Pollyanna
• Caddie Woodlawn
• Anne of Green Gables (and series) 
• Emily of New Moon 
• A Little Princess
• The Secret Garden 
• The Lost Prince
• Swallows and Amazons
• The Wind in the Willows
• The Princess and the Goblin
• A Girl of the Limberlost
• Charlotte’s Web
• Little House on the Prairie
• Heidi
• Peter Pan
• Around the World in Eighty Days
• Railway Children
• Five Children and It
• The Little Prince
• Pippi Longstocking
• The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales
• The Blue Fairy Book
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

From a review of A Brief Quadrivium and Teaching the Quadrivium: A Guide for Instructors originally published in Principia 3, no. 1 (2024)

Classical educators know that the canon of the liberal arts numbers seven, but very few of us make much progress beyond the trivium before we jump headfirst into philosophy. We approach advanced mathematics through the modern canon of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, not the four arts of the quadrivium—geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. Even the one common term, geometry, means different things. For most of us, it is something like applied algebra. The minority who have gone through Euclid will know that the classical art of geometry uses no numbers at all, only proportion. If we have some direct knowledge of the quadrivium this is only very rarely because we studied them as they are. We tend to learn about them, presenting them either as primitive (and therefore obsolete) forms of the STEM fields, or as a few wonder-inspiring diagrams of the golden ratio projected onto the masterpieces of the Old Masters sandwiched between sessions of mathematics classes hardly distinct from those offered in non-classical educational settings—two excellent starting places are Gary B. Meisner’s Golden Ratio and Mirana Lundy’s Quadrivum. In the end, if the quadrivium enters into our thinking or our teaching, it is at second or third hand, and we and our students at best come to appreciate its historical presence in the past of Western culture without acquiring the intellectual character or skills that would enable us to use the quadrivium productively in our own attempts to make the world more beautiful.

This is due to reasons both theoretical and practical. Many who would never question the enduring value of the arts of grammar, logic, or rhetoric struggle to see how the historically constructed quadrivium could be of any more than historical interest to contemporary educators. A deeper problem is that since antiquity these arts have been debased and abused, such that Latin dictionaries list “astrologer or wizard” as the second definition of the noun mathematicus. For such reasons, Plato’s Timaeus and Boethius’ De Arithmetica tend to be reserved for those undertaking advanced studies of those authors, and the immense influence exerted by these texts on Western culture is often presented as a curiosity or problem rather than as a fact whose recovery might lead to fresh insight in the present.

 But what if contemporary students went beyond learning about the historical importance of the quadrivium and learned the content and skills embedded in study of the quadrivial subjects? While many of us make verum, bonum, pulchrum our motto, few of us are prepared to give any account of the final term. The classical education movement has recovered and redeployed the arts of language, showing that logic can still be used to gain certain knowledge of truth and that virtue ethics can still be a means of knowing and doing the good. Despite our recovery of the arts of language and our confidence in their ability to give us access to reality, many see beauty as being in the eye of the beholder rather than being a transcendental susceptible to objective analysis and real knowledge. Writers such as Stratford Caldecott and David Clayton have pointed to the quadrivium as the traditional means of setting the third transcendental, beauty, on an objective basis from which it can be contemplated, known, imitated, and produced.

It comes as no surprise that our inability to accommodate pre-Copernican astronomy and pre-Cartesian mathematics (with the notable exception of Euclid) to our narrative of scientific revolution and progress has not led many of us to develop classroom resources that would give our students access to these traditions and help them develop the skills the arts promise to impart. Green Lion Press, whose edition of Euclid is no doubt well known to many readers of Principia, follows a grand narrative of the “Scientific Revolution” to a great extent in their offerings, providing the text editions that make it possible for students in great books programs to re-create the discoveries of Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier, and Faraday. When I met Howard Fisher, an associate editor at Green Lion Press, I asked him why they do not offer editions of Aristoxenus, Boethius, or other “quadrivial” authors. He told me there is no editorial policy against it, and in fact, they would if they could. The problem, he said, is a lack of editors. Would I like, he added, to try my hand at doing it myself?

Fortunately for me, a humanist who has not yet mastered the arts of number, Peter Ulrickson has provided the sort of book I have long imagined but not had the skill to write. A Brief Quadrivium divides the four arts into a thirty-week curriculum, distributed approximately equally across geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy, ending with three brief chapters that consider the quadrivium’s relationship to modern physics, mathematics, and music theory and its propaedeutic role in “preparing us to seek the highest, unchanging things.” Upon completion of the curriculum, students will not only have been exposed to wonder, but they will also have laid the foundation of a detailed, technical knowledge of the quadrivium that they can use both to understand the nature of reality and to produce works of art, in the Aristotelian sense, imitating nature to bring order to chaos and instantiate beauty in the world.

A key component of Ulrickson’s presentation is the continuity of the quadrivium and the trivium as two parts of a whole, as opposed to the modern division of the disciplines into arts and sciences. An excellent example of this in practice is Ulrickson’s gentle but persistent and effective explanation and use of technical terminology. Relying on a philosophy of language based in Aristotelian ideas that recognizes the adaequatio of words, concepts, and things and the status of each of the components of the quadrivium as stable and articulated technai, Ulrickson provides readers with an account of terms like “definition,” “lemma,” “proposition,” and “conjecture” and encourages them to build up familiarity with them. Those who, like me, have made the transition from “literary studies” to the “trivium,” who have come to appreciate the precision that training in the arts of language can bring to conversations about the great ideas, will be pleased to ground their developing knowledge of the quadrivium in this system of language. Properly technical language is not jargon; it is rather a key constitutive element of the knowledge and practice of the art, and Ulrickson presents this in a compelling way that will resonate with classical educators.

Dear Reader,

This issue of our bulletin includes articles that show two sides of the imagination. Senior Fellow Erik Ellis expresses why as a humanist scholar he values how the Quadrivium provides an objective basis for understanding and instantiating beauty, while Emily Kwilinski writes of the joys she has found as an adult in returning to the imaginative literature of her youth (we include a few selections from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series to give you a taste).

The Quadrivium has been much on my mind of late. I am writing this introductory note from the Pascal Instituut in Leiden in the Netherlands. As with our Boethius Fellows, Jeff Lehman and I are beginning a second year of teaching the Quadrivium to a small group of very bright students working towards PhDs in a Great Books program. We have begun each year with a week of in-person classes, grounding our teacher/student relations in personal interaction that is impossible with Zoom meetings alone. We have broken bread together, while having conversations that range from Leiden’s dramatic fight for independence in the 1570s to the character of Cassius in Julius Caesar, to whether equality of opportunity is a good to be desired or perhaps a justice to be insisted upon.

In a walking conversation (almost everyone bikes or walks in the cities here), Dean Gerard Versluis noted that, inspired by programs like that of St. John’s College in Annapolis, their curriculum includes mathematics and literature. This has caused them difficulties in recruiting students, who are often eager to study philosophy and theology but wonder why they should be required to take courses in subject areas they consider irrelevant. There are many things we can say to explain this, but often the proof is in the pudding. I loved hearing from Femke Heijmans, one of our students, who expressed her amazement at how much she learned from last year’s study of Euclid, but even more at her realization of how much, much more there is to know than she will ever be able to.

The same question came up in one of the several academic retreats I led for teachers this summer. The three-day program of integrated learning includes a session in which participants prepare to publicly present Euclid’s demonstration of how to bisect an angle without using a protractor. In the midst of some energetic discussion to understand the arguments and entertain other ways, one participant raised the question, “But what use is all this?” Some participants excitedly pointed out that they had been enjoying a palpable experience of learning to use reason. I invited them to imagine how vastly different their life would be if they had been trained so that they could habitually reproduce even difficult geometrical demonstrations clearly, orderly, and intelligently.

These are among the profound effects that the Quadrivium has traditionally had on students and continues to have today on liberal arts students fortunate enough to be required to develop their powers of mathematical thinking. The Boethius Institute is in a privileged position to promote the inclusion of the Quadrivium in today’s classical liberal arts renewal, and it will be a primary focus of our efforts in the next few years.

In other news, the Augustine Institute graduate school, home base for Jeff Lehman and myself, moved over the summer to a beautiful new campus in St. Louis. This threw a wrench into our plans to host several events this summer, but will provide outstanding opportunities in the near future. We hope to welcome you there in the future.

From Abraham Lincoln Online

June 1858
Abraham Lincoln wrote three autobiographies in a two-year period. This first, terse effort was prepared at the request of Charles Lanman, who was compiling the Dictionary of Congress.

Born, February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Education defective.
Profession, a lawyer.
Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk war.
Postmaster at a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois legislature, and was a member of the lower house of Congress.

December 20, 1859
Lincoln wrote this second autobiography for Jesse Fell, a long-time Illinois Republican friend who was a native of Pennsylvania. Fell used his influence to get the piece incorporated into an article appearing in a Pennsylvania newspaper on February 11, 1860. Lincoln enclosed the autobiography in a letter to Fell, remarking, "There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me."

I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-- second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon Counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New-England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite, than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, litterally [sic] without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals, still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin, writin, and cipherin" to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard [sic]. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New-Salem (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County), where I remained a year as a sort of Clerk in a store. Then came the Black-Hawk war; and I was elected a Captain of Volunteers--a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten--the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this Legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a whig in politics, and generally on the whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses--I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes--no other marks or brands recollected.

June 1860
When Lincoln first ran for President, John L. Scripps of the Chicago Press and Tribune asked him for an autobiography to write a campaign biography about him. This third-person account is the result. The longest of his autobiographies, it offers fascinating information about his early years.

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, then in Hardin, now in the more recently formed county of La Rue, Kentucky. His father, Thomas, and grandfather, Abraham, were born in Rockingham County, Virginia, whither their ancestors had come from Berks County, Pennsylvania. His lineage has been traced no father back than this. The family were originally Quakers, though in later times they have fallen away from the peculiar habits of that people. The grandfather, Abraham, had four brothers--Isaac, Jacob, John, and Thomas. So far as known, the descendants of Jacob and John are still in Virginia. Isaac went to a place near where Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee join; and his descendants are in that region. Thomas came to Kentucky, and after many years died there, whence his descendants went to Missouri. Abraham, grandfather of the subject of this sketch, came to Kentucky, and was killed by Indians about the year 1784. He left a widow, three sons, and two daughters. The eldest son, Mordecai, remained in Kentucky till late in life, when he removed to Hancock County, Illinois, where soon after he died, and where several of his descendants still remain. The second son, Josiah, removed at an early day to a place on Blue River, now within Hancock County, Indiana, but no recent information of him or his family has been obtained. The eldest sister, Mary, married Ralph Crume, and some of her descendants are now known to be in Breckenridge County, Kentucky. The second sister, Nancy, married William Brumfield, and her family are not known to have left Kentucky, but there is no recent information from them. Thomas, the youngest son, and the father of the present subject, by the early death of his father, and very narrow circumstances of his mother, even in childhood was a wandering laboring-boy, and grew up literally without education. He never did more in the way of writing than to bunglingly write his own name. Before he was grown he passed one year as a hired hand with his uncle Isaac on Watauga, a branch of the Holston River. Getting back into Kentucky, and having reached his twenty-eighth year, he married Nancy Hanks--mother of the present subject--in the year 1806. She also was born in Virginia; and relatives of hers of the name of Hanks, and of other names, now reside in Coles, in Macon, and in Adams counties, Illinois, and also in Iowa. The present subject has no brother or sister of the whole or half blood. He had a sister, older than himself, who was grown and married, but died many years ago, leaving no child; also a brother, younger than himself, who died in infancy. Before leaving Kentucky, he and his sister were sent, for short periods, to A B C schools, the first kept by Zachariah Riney, and the second by Caleb Hazel.

At this time his father resided on Knob Creek, on the road from Bardstown, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, at a point three or three and a half miles south or southwest of Atherton's Ferry, on the Rolling Fork. From this place he removed to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in the autumn of 1816, Abraham then being in his eighth year. This removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles in Kentucky. He settled in an unbroken forest, and the clearing away of surplus wood was the great task ahead. Abraham, though very young, was large of his age, and had an axe put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument--less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons. At this place Abraham took an early start as a hunter, which was never much improved afterward. A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham with a rifle-gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a trigger on any larger game. In the autumn of 1818 his mother died; and a year afterward his father married Mrs. Sally Johnston, at Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a widow with three children of her first marriage. She proved a good and kind mother to Abraham, and is still living in Coles County, Illinois. There were no children of this second marriage. His father's residence continued at the same place in Indiana till 1830. While here Abraham went to A B C schools by littles, kept successively by Andrew Crawford,--Sweeney, and Azel W. Dorsey. He does not remember any other. The family of Mr. Dorsey now resides in Schuyler County, Illinois. Abraham now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never in a college or academy as a student, and never inside of a college or academy building till since he had a law license. What he has in the way of education he has picked up. After he was twenty-three and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar--imperfectly, of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress. He regrets his want of education, and does what he can to supply the want. In his tenth year he was kicked by a horse, and apparently killed for a time. When he was nineteen, still residing in Indiana, he made his first trip upon a flatboat to New Orleans. He was a hired hand merely, and he and a son of the owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the "cargo-load," as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast; and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the mêlée, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then "cut cable," "weighed anchor," and left.

March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timberland and prairie, about ten miles westerly from Decatur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham.

The sons-in-law were temporarily settled in other places in the county. In the autumn all hands were greatly afflicted with ague and fever, to which they had not been used, and by which they were greatly discouraged, so much so that they determined on leaving the county. They remained, however, through the succeeding winter, which was the winter of the very celebrated "deep snow" of Illinois. During that winter Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet residing in Macon County, hired themselves to Denton Offutt to take a flatboat from Beardstown, Illinois, to New Orleans; and for that purpose were to join him--Offutt--at Springfield, Illinois, so soon as the snow should go off. When it did go off, which was about the first of March, 1831, the county was so flooded as to make traveling by land impracticable; to obviate which difficulty they purchased a large canoe, and came down the Sangamon River in it. This is the time and the manner of Abraham's first entrance into Sangamon County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring themselves to him for twelve dollars per month each, and getting the timber out of the trees and building a boat at Old Sangamon town on the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat they took to New Orleans, substantially upon the old contract.

During this boat-enterprise acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to account, he contracted with him to act as clerk for him, on his return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New Salem, then in Sangamon, now in Menard County. Hanks had not gone to New Orleans, but having a family, and being likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, had turned back from St. Louis. He is the same John Hanks who now engineers the "rail enterprise" at Decatur, and is a first cousin to Abraham's mother. Abraham's father, with his own family and others mentioned, had, in pursuance of their intention, removed from Macon to Coles County. John D. Johnston, the stepmother's son, went with them, and Abraham stopped indefinitely and for the first time, as it were, by himself at New Salem, before mentioned. This was in July, 1831. Here he rapidly made acquaintances and friends. In less than a year Offutt's business was failing--had almost failed--when the Black Hawk war of 1832 broke out. Abraham joined a volunteer company, and, to his own surprise, was elected captain of it. He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction. He went to the campaign, served near three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but was in no battle. He now owns, in Iowa, the land upon which his own warrants for the service were located. Returning from the campaign, and encouraged by his great popularity among his immediate neighbors, he the same year ran for the legislature, and was beaten,--his own precinct, however, casting its votes 277 for and 7 against him--and that, too, while he was an avowed Clay man, and the precinct the autumn afterward giving a majority of 115 to General Jackson over Mr. Clay. This was the only time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people. He was now without means and out of business, but was anxious to remain with his friends who had treated him with so much generosity, especially as he had nothing elsewhere to go to. He studied what he should do--thought of learning the blacksmith trade--thought of trying to study law--rather thought he could not succeed at that without a better education. Before long, strangely enough, a man offered to sell, and did sell, to Abraham and another as poor as himself, an old stock of goods, upon credit. They opened as merchants; and he says that was the store. Of course they did nothing but get deeper and deeper in debt. He was appointed postmaster at New Salem--the office being too insignificant to make his politics an objection. The store winked out. The surveyor of Sangamon offered to depute to Abraham that portion of his work which was within his part of the county. He accepted, procured a compass and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a little, and went at it. This procured bread, and kept soul and body together. The election of 1834 came, and he was then elected to the legislature by the highest vote cast for any candidate. Major John T. Stuart, then in full practice of the law, was also elected. During the canvass, in a private conversation he encouraged Abraham [to] study law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, and went at it in good earnest. He studied with nobody. He still mixed in the surveying to pay board and clothing bills. When the legislature met, the lawbooks were dropped, but were taken up again at the end of the session. He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law license, and on April 15, 1837, removed to Springfield, and commenced the practice--his old friend Stuart taking him into partnership. March 3, 1837, by a protest entered upon the "Illinois House Journal" of that date, at pages 817 and 818, Abraham, with Dan Stone, another representative of Sangamon, briefly defined his position on the slavery question; and so far as it goes, it was then the same that it is now. The protest is as follows:

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of Abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

"Dan Stone,
"A Lincoln,
"Representatives from the County of Sangamon."

In 1838 and 1840, Mr. Lincoln's party voted for him as Speaker, but being in the minority he was not elected. After 1840 he declined a reelection to the legislature. He was on the Harrison electoral ticket in 1840, and on that of Clay in 1844, and spent much time and labor in both those canvasses. In November, 1842, he was married to Mary, daughter of Robert S. Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky. They have three living children, all sons, one born in 1843, one in 1850, and one in 1853. They lost one, who was born in 1846.

In 1846 he was elected to the lower House of Congress, and served one term only, commencing in December, 1847, and ending with the inauguration of General Taylor, in March 1849. All the battles of the Mexican war had been fought before Mr. Lincoln took his seat in Congress, but the American army was still in Mexico, and the treaty of peace was not fully and formally ratified till the June afterward. Much has been said of his course in Congress in regard to this war. A careful examination of the "Journal" and "Congressional Globe" shows that he voted for all the supply measures that came up, and for all the measures in any way favorable to the officers, soldiers, and their families, who conducted the war through: with the exception that some of these measures passed without yeas and nays, leaving no record as to how particular men voted. The "Journal" and "Globe" also show him voting that the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States. This is the language of Mr. Ashmun's amendment, for which Mr. Lincoln and nearly or quite all other Whigs of the House of Representatives voted.

Mr. Lincoln's reasons for the opinion expressed by this vote were briefly that the President had sent General Taylor into an inhabited part of the country belonging to Mexico, and not to the United States, and thereby had provoked the first act of hostility, in fact the commencement of the war; that the place, being the country bordering on the east bank of the Rio Grande, was inhabited by native Mexicans, born there under the Mexican government, and had never submitted to, nor been conquered by, Texas or the United States, nor transferred to either by treaty; that although Texas claimed the Rio Grande as her boundary, Mexico had never recognized it, and neither Texas nor the United States had ever enforced it; that there was a broad desert between that and the country over which Texas had actual control; that the country where hostilities commenced, having once belonged to Mexico, must remain so until it was somehow legally transferred, which had never been done.

Mr. Lincoln thought the act of sending an armed force among the Mexicans was unnecessary, inasmuch as Mexico was in no way molesting or menacing the United States or the people thereof; and that it was unconstitutional, because the power of levying war is vested in Congress, and not in the President. He thought the principal motive for the act was to divert public attention from the surrender of "Fifty-four, forty, or fight" to Great Britain, on the Oregon boundary question.

Mr. Lincoln was not a candidate for reelection. This was determined upon and declared before he went to Washington, in accordance with an understanding among Whig friends, by which Colonel Hardin and Colonel Baker had each previously served a single term in this same district.

In 1848, during his term in Congress, he advocated General Taylor's nomination for the presidency, in opposition to all others, and also took an active part for his election after his nomination, speaking a few times in Maryland, near Washington, several times in Massachusetts, and canvassing quite fully his own district in Illinois, which was followed by a majority in the district of over 1500 for General Taylor.

Upon his return from Congress he went to the practice of the law with greater earnestness than ever before. In 1852 he was upon the Scott electoral ticket, and did something in the way of canvassing, but owing to the hopelessness of the cause in Illinois he did less than in previous presidential canvasses.

In 1854 his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before.

In the autumn of that year he took the stump with no broader practical aim or object than to secure, if possible, the reelection of Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a more marked attention than they had ever before done. As the canvass proceeded he was drawn to different parts of the State outside of Mr. Yates' district. He did not abandon the law, but gave his attention by turns to that and politics. The State agricultural fair was at Springfield that year, and Douglas was announced to speak there.

In the canvass of 1856 Mr. Lincoln made over fifty speeches, no one of which, so far as he remembers, was put in print. One of them was made at Galena, but Mr. Lincoln has no recollection of any part of it being printed; nor does he remember whether in that speech he said anything about a Supreme Court decision. He may have spoken upon that subject, and some of the newspapers may have reported him as saying what it now ascribed to him, but he thinks he could not have expressed himself as represented.

For quite a number of years now, art has become an important part of my life. One of the main values I take from art is its ability to change how I see the world. It helps me see beyond the ordinary and see essentials. Each branch of art can do this in a different way. I’d like to share a story from a recent trip to Paris and Israel that I think can demonstrate the power of art and, hopefully, convince you to make it part of your life.

World War II has always fascinated me – the scale of the conflict, the righteousness of the cause, and the stories of heroism have captured my imagination and interest. When I found myself in France last spring, I knew I had to make the trip to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy.

Throughout the day we toured the various battle sites, hearing tales of heroism. Our tour ended at the American cemetery at Omaha beach. It’s a beautiful place. The gardens are immaculate. The setting is beautiful and peaceful.

Overlooking the rows of grave markers is a statue of a young man. When I first saw it I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was not expecting it. I couldn’t help but feel in awe looking up at him towering over me. His body is triumphant and yet there’s a sadness in his face. It’s beautiful and tragic. The title of this statue is “The Spirit of American Youth Rising From The Waves”. I felt overwhelmed. Even writing about it now is difficult.

This statue made everything I had experienced that day more vivid. It captured my feelings on the triumph and tragedy of World War 2 and the immense gratitude I feel for those people who fought for something they believed in. The statue embodies the spirit of the American youth who went on to defeat the Nazis but also the tragedy of the price that was paid. The statue and what it represented would come back to me in an unexpected way.

A week later I arrived in Israel. For those of you who don’t know, Israel has a mandatory army service starting at 18. Nearly every Israeli does at least a few years of service. It’s common to see young off-duty soldiers walking the streets of Tel Aviv in their army fatigues, a gun slung over their shoulder, enjoying their day. This is normal in Israel. It’s ordinary. I was expecting to see this. What I didn’t expect was how I would react. Each time I passed one of these soldiers, I saw the statue from Omaha beach. I would well up with emotion. Instead of seeing a young adult doing their grocery shopping, I would see “The Spirit of American Youth Rising From The Waves” and everything it represented to me.

My experience in Israel demonstrates one of the most powerful ways art can enhance life. Art can change how you look at the world. It can capture the essence of an idea and value and present it to you in a way that is intense and vivid. It can become a lens through which you can see the world in a different way. It allows you to see your values embedded in the ordinary world around you. Instead of seeing a young soldier, I saw the statue and felt a wave of gratitude.

As you go out into the world, I hope you’ll look for art that you can use in a similar way. I hope you will look for art that will help make the world around you more vivid and that will allow you to experience your values.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use art in this way, I recommend visiting Touching the Art. Luc Travers has a method of reading artworks that can help you connect with art and make it part of your life.

In 2021, I taught a course on the Trivium for the first time, and have taught it several times since. There is nothing like teaching for learning, and I have learned a great deal as I have taught, especially about rhetoric. I had taught small portions of Aristotle’s Rhetoric before, but remained ignorant of most of it, and I knew almost nothing about later traditions of rhetoric. I still think of myself as merely an advanced beginner in rhetoric rather than a professor of it, but I am becoming an amateur, a lover. Aristotle’s Rhetoric has educated me in the range of the orator’s understanding of the minds and hearts of ordinary people, while the traditional canons of rhetoric, its various figures, and the exercises of progymnasmata have improved my approach to speaking and to analyzing the speeches of others.

Though I have been a passionate as well as professional reader of great texts, I find I am gaining significant insight into and appreciation of historically great speeches. Getting to know the trees in the forest of rhetoric (especially through the Silva Rhetoricae website) has led me to ask certain questions habitually and in an orderly way, helping me get inside the mind of the author. I have learned to think about the occasion and the audience, distinguish appeals to logos and pathos and ethos, understand the flow of a speech and the choices made by its author through the canons of invention and arrangement. I am even beginning to become conversant with the common figures, tropes, and schemes.

It has been a particular joy to gain greater insight into Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. I have always loved the speech for its deeply moving conclusion - “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right….” Yet, in spite of having read it many times in my career, even studying it carefully on several occasions, I had still found it a difficult speech to follow. Lincoln seems to wander around from the conspiracies that took place at his first inauguration to slavery, prayer, and the Almighty, before his culminating exhortation “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan….” But looking at it through the lenses of classical rhetorical techniques helped bring his order into focus for me.

The most general and encompassing ideas in classical rhetoric are those of Kairos and audience. The first, connected to the occasion giving rise to the speech, leads us to ask what sort of speech would seem appropriate to the formal occasion, as well as what opportunities it offers to the speaker for taking on larger issues. The second makes us ask what is the character and disposition of the audience he is facing? Is he addressing multiple audiences? What difficulties might they present for effective communication? How should he overcome them?

Referring to the formal occasion is often a great introduction, and allows the speaker to let his audience know what he wants to talk about. Lincoln’s first paragraph distinguishes the occasion of this inauguration from that of his first inaugural address; the first demanded a detailed account of how he intended to proceed in a time of crisis, but this does not. He does not tell them what he thinks this occasion really demands. However, he puts aside what his immediate audience might expect - that he would lead them in anticipatory celebrations of imminent triumph - with a gentle understatement: “The progress of our arms…is I trust reasonably satisfactory.” His audience is left wondering what can he say that will be timely now, what does he think they need to hear? Readers of the speech can tell from the conclusion that he wants to bring them to a place where they will put aside all malice and embrace charity for all, even for Southerners. We can imagine how unwelcome that might be.
Arrangement is another central rhetorical consideration. How has the speaker structured his speech? What are its constituent parts, and how does each contribute to his central point? Lincoln uses two structural techniques, the more obvious of which is parallelism. In the second paragraph Lincoln initiates a comparison between the two sides in the war that extends through the rest of the speech.

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, insurgent 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.

Parallel sentence structure creates antithesis, which highlights their different purposes: to save the union without war, to destroy it without war; make war rather than let the nation survive; accept war rather than let it perish. But he speaks of their areas of agreement as well as disagreement. They agreed in dreading war. Each recognized that if it had not been for the existence of slaves, there would have been no war. They each expected the war to be over quickly; neither expected the war would bring slavery to an end. Each prayed that God would aid them against the other.

While parallelism is woven throughout the main body of the speech, the speech naturally divides into two sections  according to a classical distinction particularly appropriate to a courtroom. First comes a statement of straightforward facts about a dispute (narratio), then comes the proof that establishes the speaker’s main point (confirmatio). The facts should be relatively uncontroversial, yet presented so as to prepare the ground for the controversial argument.

Lincoln presents the facts in a strikingly impersonal way. He does not speak in terms of “we” and “they,” but simply of one side and the other. Lincoln chooses to use the word “party” instead of side, as though bidding the audience to look at the dispute from the impartial standpoint of a judge, one who has seen many disputes in his days, and knows that there is usually plenty of blame to go around.

The second paragraph ends briefly, impersonally, soberly. And the war came. There is no human subject for that sentence, as though the war came on its own, inevitably, apart from any human decision. This ending naturally leads to a question, not “Who started the war? Which side is to blame?” but “How did the war come?” The existence of slaves was, somehow, the cause of the war. The commas in the text no doubt reflect a pause on “somehow”, helping the audience hear that the implicit question has only been vaguely answered. Although other issues were involved, all knew that in some way the war came because the two parties had different intentions with regard to slaves.

As Lincoln begins to move into the hard part, where he must bring his audience to conclusions they might not like, he brings in prayer, the Bible, and God. He references four different Scripture passages in seven sentences. He places his hope to persuade his audience on authority, the highest authority, the most powerful authority in the Union.

He begins by implying a question. No one expected the war to be so big, nor for slavery to cease before the war ended. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both sides prayed that God would be on their side; the magnitude of the war made evident that He was not fully on either side. In another brief, undecorated but powerful sentence, Lincoln expresses the key turn in thought he wishes his audience to have: The Almighty has his own purposes. Those who believe in a providential God must expect that they are not the primary agents in so great an event. The question becomes, not what did each party intend, but what did the Almighty intend?

Lincoln, with the rest of the North, can understand why God would not be on the side of those who prayed that slavery would be extended. Lincoln adapts the language of Genesis 3:19 to suggest the hypocrisy of Christian slave owners: It may seem strange that any should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces…. Yet he immediately invokes Matthew 7 so his audience can hear the warning of Jesus against indulging in such sentiments: “Let us judge not that we be not judged.”

The implicit heartfelt question of the Northern party is, “Why has He not been entirely on our side? Aren’t we the just ones in this dispute? Why have we suffered so much bloodshed and devastation?” Lincoln uses a hypothetical statement to respectfully suggest a providential purpose for the war: God is using it as a scourge to punish those responsible for the evils of slavery. He offers evidence from a Scriptural text: Woe to that man by whom the offenses come. By whom did the offense come? Lincoln must make his audience face the hard truth that both parties share in the guilt of slavery. Though at the beginning of the war, slaves were localized in the South, it had not been so from the beginning of America. …He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came. He names it now, not “Southern slavery”, but “American slavery”, which for 250 years, from the earliest days of the colonies, had brought wealth to the owners and unjust suffering to the slaves. He therefore bids his Christian audience, not to triumph as the just, but to follow Scripture in praising the Lord as they accept His scourge: “...As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Lincoln educated himself to be a master orator through textbooks and Euclid and Shakespeare and years of advocacy and debate.  In this speech, we admire how, having laid the groundwork for his argument with lawyerly objectivity, he brings it home with the forcefulness of a revival preacher, a style that befits an American statesman (as does its brevity), preparing his audience, chastened in both mind and heart, to receive his gentle invitation to embrace a Christian attitude towards the suffering of friend and enemy alike:

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.

Dear Reader,

Over 25 years into the classical liberal arts revival, we are launching into a period of accelerated growth. My sense of this has been confirmed by recent participation in the Transforming Culture Symposium at Benedictine College in Kansas, and an Alcuin Retreat for classical education leaders at the University of Virginia on the theme of “The Academic Return of  the Great Tradition.” Mainstream education today is looking worse and worse, while veterans in the movement have founded institutions that are now very good at offering parents, educators, administrators, pastors, and social leaders the aid they need to build or re-build school communities with a high rate of success.

Recently I was asked, “If classical education were to increase tenfold, what would the future look like in two generations?” “Who knows?” is the truest answer. The present is so uncertain; we stand in real danger of losing the freedom and social stability necessary for education. Still, it’s interesting to muse. “Classical education” means different things to different people; those who have been involved in the renewal for some years are now trying to sort through these different ideas. If we take it to refer generally to a serious education grounded in the best of Western cultural traditions and ordered to the true, good, and beautiful, today’s growth gives hope of great fruit in fifty years. The demand is certainly there, and growing; if we can meet it while providing all the necessary teacher formation, which is the most important part of the work, and avoiding the teacher and student burnout that can afflict networks that grow too quickly, then we would be graduating several hundred thousand each year, between 5% and 10% of the total high school graduates. In 30 years or 40 years perhaps 10 million adults will have been nurtured in serious, often joyful, learning communities, with a high rate of alumni devotion. They will be grounded talented well-formed people, a good chunk of whom will have significant life experience under their belt. And that’s only in the United States. Many around the world are seeing what is happening in the US, and doing all they can to begin movements in their countries.

Is that a critical mass large enough to topple the hollowed out husks of the educational and cultural institutions already showing signs of eventual collapse by providing real, workable, worthwhile alternatives? At least it should be enough to pass on in a beautiful way the best of Christian Western civilization in the midst of general cultural collapse. Maybe, it will even bring about in some form a new birth of wisdom, which we so desperately need. We need our knowledge of the truth to blossom into wisdom, we need our preservation of the beautiful to create profundity, we need our love of the good to produce statesmen.

Our society is plagued by a lack of wisdom; the modern era was grounded on a complete rejection of the possibility and desirability of wisdom. We need wise educators, creators, and leaders to inspire us, persuade us, instruct us, and show us the way. The larger the number of those well-educated, the more likely we are to produce these great people, especially as we foster those special souls who give themselves over to the pursuit of wisdom with a passionate life intensity, and as we develop a greater diversity of thoughts and practices among those who love those things and are able to argue about them, for in a real way wisdom is born of deep and serious questions.

In this edition of our bulletin, we can see the fruits of Abraham Lincoln’s education in serious grammar study and reading Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Euclid, and Blackstone, as we mine the deep spiritual wisdom expressed beautifully and powerfully in his Second Inaugural Address. Boethius Fellow Joseph Tabenkin shows how his openness to art allowed a powerful sculpture to fulfill his experience of Normandy Beach.