Lincoln at Gettysburg - Gary Wills
A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me which books had the biggest impact on my during college. Lincoln at Gettysburg immediately came to mind. I read it in a political theory course at William and Mary - it was the kind of course that makes a liberal arts degree worthwhile.
The book breaks down how Lincoln’s words to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg remade America’s understanding of itself. Lincoln used a new framing of the Declaration of Independence to make slavery indefensible. In the astonishing short speech (especially for the times), Lincoln points to Declaration of Independence as the political ideal for which Americans were obligated to strive. That ideal will never change but the manifestation of that ideal must evolve to get closer and closer. If that founding document held that “all men are created equal” and “endowed with certain unalienable rights”, then the abolition of slavery was absolutely necessary.
Beyond the subject matter, the book itself just hits all the right notes. It’s clear and concise but also supports all of its arguments with abundant primary resources. So many times we hear about someone being a “political genius” without really seeing how. It takes a clear thinker like Gary Wills to show both what inspired the political genius and what made it different from what was going on at the time. Wills does this in spades in Lincoln at Gettysburg.