People tend to equate intelligence with simpler language

Thanks! It's interesting to see the drafts in Lincolns own writing. Textwise, the differences between the versions don't appear to be that big.

A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are arguably the finest examples of his best writing style, and are considerably shorter than his other novels (which i assert having read every novel he wrote, including The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was left uncompleted at his death--damn it ! ! !). Our Mutual Friend, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, David Copperfield and a few others were serialized. This both meant that Dickens would want to meet the minimum word requirement of the magazines, and would want to write in a manner so as to lure the reader into buying the next number of the magazine. Novels such as the two mentioned above, and Hard Times, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey & Son and a few others were written in their entirety before publication.

I have always considered A Tale of Two Cities to be the best of his literary efforts. The entire work was a study in contrasts. The opening lines are: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

The closing lines are: " 'Tis a far, far better thing that i do now, than I have ever done. 'Tis a far, far better rest that i go to than i have ever known." Those last lines are spoken by Sidney Carton, a genius of a legal scholar, who never made his way as a lawyer, because of his fondness for carousing. Other attorneys employ him, chiefly by plying him with food and drink, to dive into legal tomes and find the precise citations they need to sustain their cases. One such attorney consults Carton during the defense of one Dr. Manette. The good doctor was incarcerated in the Bastille, and the opening chapter, "Recalled to Life," concerns itself with his rescue from that prison before the French Revolution. Carton therefore meets Lucie Manette, the good doctor's daughter who was spirited away to England and raised there. Carton falls for her in a big way, but her heart is given a French aristocrat (forget the name right now), to whom Carton bears a striking resemblance--so much so, that he willingly substitutes himself for the Frenchman, and goes to the guillotine in his place. Those lines are Carton's statement from the scaffold.

The story revolves around a bank in London, which manages the financial affairs of Dr. Manette. Their "dogs body" is one Jeremiah Cruncher, who supplements his income in the evenings by "fishing." Dickens has a delightful comment, which i cannot quote from memory, but to paraphrase, it was not a style of angling which Izzy Walton would have recognized (referring to The Compleate Angler, by Isaac Walton, 1656--which actually has some excellent fly fishing advice, after one wades throught the first few hundred pages of tedious literary allusions, and a superficial debate between Venator [the hunter], Auceps [the falconer] and Piscator [the fisherman])--Cruncher was a grave robber. He acts the stout English Yoeman, though, in defending Lucie and her betrothed when they are escaping Paris, and foils the evil Madame DeFarge.

The characters, the cultures of England and France, the very language of the text are all studies in contrasts--between these and within them. Dickens could, as no one else of whom i know writing in English, sustain metaphors and literary devices. This stands as his finest work to my mind, because of the brilliance with which he explores the theme of contrast. It is to literature what Beethoven's elaboration of four simple notes in his Fifth symphony are to music.

ehBeth. Good thread. I have always claimed that compression and conciseness are the real keys to understanding.

And Edward Everett, the main speaker at Gettysburg, realized that his oratory was too lengthy.....and sent a note to Lincoln commending him on his brief and powerful speech.

Hey! I thought Churchill's comment was:

This is an impertinence up with which I will not put...hmmmmm.

fishin', some lawyer here always closes his commercial with "FOR the people..." emphasis on the wrong word.

One significant difference is the "under God" controversy, Thomas. From that page:

"However, one of the arguments supporting the contrary theory that the delivery text has been lost is that some of the words and phrases of the Nicolay copy do not match contemporaneous accounts. The words "under God," for example, are missing from the phrase "that this nation [under God] shall have a new birth of freedom...." In order for the Nicolay draft to have been the reading copy, Lincoln uncharacteristically would have had to depart from his written text in several instances. This copy of the Gettysburg Address remained in John Nicolay's possession until his death in 1901, when it passed to his friend and colleague John Hay."

As you might well imagine, the "under God" locution is a special bone of contention. For all that i admire Lincoln, and especially his gift with the language, i despair that he altered the tone of republican government to include a distinctly theistic tone into the public forum. Prior to Lincoln, Presidents scrupulously avoided religious references, and President Jackson once refused public appeals to announce a day of thanksgiving specifically on the grounds of the principle of separation of church and state. Lincoln had frequent reference to "the Almighty," and played upon the religious sentiments of the populace to his own political ends. In his life prior to his entry into politics, there is no evidence of any adherence to religious practice. Is there irony, or an minatory character, to the fact that he was the first Republican President?

setanta -
I consider Dickens the overall best novelist I have read. Hemingway, I sometimes read, but I can take it or leave it with him.

I'm right with ya on that one, EB . . .

I think this is a truism (ehBeth's original post).

I have found that those with a thorough grasp of their subject, and a gift for communicating it clearly, do so in simple, straightforward language.

Lesser mortals obfuscate (!) and use high-flown or overcomplicated language.

McT

I still think it depends more on the delivery than the size words in use.

Wow -- so that's how far back this controversy goes? Personally, the religious undertones don't bother me much, as long as the orator keeps it sincere. For a more contemporary example, Martin Luther King's rhetoric was full of these undertones as well -- "I have seen the promised land!" -- and I wouldn't see this as an argument against King running for president. (Which he never did, I know.)

Love the PowerPoint version... hee hee hee hee!

I read something recently ("recently" has come to mean "sometime in the last four years", as childbirth seems to have scrambled my chronological memories rather throroughly) that blamed PowerPoint for all kinds of communication failures.

Oh, this was about Columbia I think, that the presentation on possible weaknesses was in PowerPoint and really glossed over the bad news. Wonder if I can find that...?

I don't know that the controversy goes back that far. But it assumes an importance not previously seen when the issue of the separation of church and state becomes important. I'd be flip here for a moment, and say that i personally object to the religious "overtones" of the current administration--the implication, and sometimes the outright statement, that the Shrub is on a mission from god.

Martin King definitely had a great oratorical ability. That is partly a product of his heritage as a southern preacher, but mostly a product of a great intellect and articulate ability. Leaving aside the other obvious problems for a black man running for President in the late 1960's (or even today), and simply considering the religious issue: when Kennedy ran for President, it was common talk that there were a danger of the White House being controlled by the Vatican. The same issue has, incredibly, been raised, albeit feebly, in regard to Kerry. King speaking of having seen the promised land is both understandable, and not in the least objectionable, in a movement such as was the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. It was very much a case of speaking to his constituency in language they understood. (It was also, incidentally, a language very familiar to their racist opponents.) However, in a secular, pluralistic society, it has not place in the forum of public political debate.

From an historical perspective, i see the Lincoln presidency as the era in which theism was deliberately injected into the political arena. Given what is known of the man before he ran for public office, there is also a stink of hypocricy. There could be no mistaking the character of that religious content, either. Lincoln initiated the thanksgiving holiday, and was both sufficiently well-read, and a sufficiently adroit public speaker, to have well-laced his speeches with biblical references, and appeals to theistic values and beliefs. Our ancestors of Revolutionary times had a recent history of religiously inspired strife which made them especially suspicious of appeals to religion in political matters. The modern historical "take" on the "great awakening" of the early 18th century in America is that it was a wide-spread phenomenon (it was not) and that it had profound and benign effect on the population. In fact, it lead to strife, and the use of governmental power by established churches (of which there were several in the colonies) to crush the movement. The Thirty Years War and the English civil wars were not in the memory of any individual, but were certainly in the "collective memory" of the society. The "Jesus cult" with which we are familiar today was totally absent, as well. The Puritans, the Scots Kirk, the Dutch Reform Church, and all branches of Calvinism believed that they had a covenant with the god of the Old Testament; to them, the New Testament simply represented an affirmation of the nature of the covenant, and not a separate theological statement.

It was in the late 1860's that "In God We Trust" was added to the coinage. It was also after the dissolution of the Klu Klux Klan in 1870 (the modern clan dates from a lunatic Baptist preacher--perhaps only so self-described--in Georgia in the early 1900'), that a racist, Protestant movement began, the members of which were known as "Lily Whites." Anti-catholic sentiments were common, and the famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast, elevated now to the status of national hero, spent as much time, or more, on anti-catholic propaganda as on his attacks on Tammany Hall (which was, after all, an Irish Catholic political machine). The movement to "christianize" the nation got new impetus during the red scare years. The "Pledge of Allegiance" did not originally contain the words "under God," those were added in the 1950's--and ironically, the author was a Protestant minister, whose original draft contained no reference to god.

I consider that this is all traceable back to Lincoln, who seems to have broken a magisterial "vow of silence" on the issue of religion--the inclusion of which in political discussion had been scrupulously avoided by his predecessors.

I have lazy writer block

You guys ever read: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
by: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER - here's a guy who can write.

It may be true for the secular, pluralistic society you live in, but it certainly isn't ture in the secular, pluralistic society I live in. Here in Germany, agnostics and atheists acknowledge that even if you don't believe in the substance of the Bible, it is still a cornucopia of quotes -- just like anything written by Homer, Shakespeare, or Goethe. Why not make use of this cornucopia? On the other hand, we have nothing like your Religious Right, so heathens like me and devoted Christians like our president Rau can talk with each other in a civil and relaxed tone. We don't have the rhetorical arms race you seem to have in America.


I don't know about benign, but Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its American History article, does give the impression that it was widespread, at least in the South. Can you give me your source stating it was not widespread?


Even more ironically, it contained no reference to America either. The first version read: "I pledge allegiance to my flag, and to the republic for which it stands..." Much better. I like the idea that Americans, Canadians, French and Germans can stand together, face a forest of flagpoles, each pledging allegiance to their own flags by reciting the same words. I'm an E pluribus unum guy.


You could be right here, but the "religious revival" happened a generation before Lincoln if I'm not mistaken. [Edit: I was mistaken. I thought "religious revival" happened in the 1830, but it was the 1730s. I was off by a whole century. Sorry. Nevertheless ... ] I guess if Lincoln hadn't existed, some president would have started mixing religion into politics around the same time.

Not much time, so i'll take the last point, as it appears either that you have a misapprehension, or i was unclear. The "great awakening" took place in the early 18th century, as i don't a reference at hand at work, i'll suggest the 1730's. During the American Civil War, there was a large revivalist movement which began in the Confederates States Armies, chiefly in the Army of Northern Virginia, and most specifically at the instigation of Thomas Jackson, who worked hard in what little time he had away from other military affairs, to create a corps of chaplains for that army. Revivalism had been common, but largely viewed as an exploitation of the credulous prior to that war (Samuel Clemens provides a slyly humorous example in Huckleberry Finn). It was not widespread even the, although it became widespread in the American south after the war, as it had become familiar to the common soldier of the south during the war. I cannot for the life of me think why you would say that "some president would have started mixing relgion into politics around the same time."

I'll get back to you on "the great awakening."

Ive gotta catch up in the events here. I can see an attorney having a field day with Lincoln between the two drafts at The Nat Archives.
"Allright Mr Lincoln, we seem to have some discrepencies in your two versions of this speech. In which version were you lying?"

He'd have played Hell . . . Lincoln was one of the sharpest law dogs who ever took on corporate opponents successfully . . . he made his name as a lawyer, not simply from indefatiguably riding circuit with a continuously heavy, and largely successful case load, but in particular, from winning a case for the a railroad (Rock Island Line?) whose plans to bridge a river (Mississippi?--i'm at work, no references close to hand) was stoutly opposed by the river boat companies, an powerful interest in the day.

'K, Thomas, i've spent quite a long time digging for my copy of The Birth Of The Nation; A Portrait Of The American People On The Eve Of Independence, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., which was published in 1968, three years after his death. I don't know if my copy "grew legs," and that's why i can't find it right now. But i'll proceed. I will note that what i write here can be characterized as an unsupported statement form authority, and i can live with that. Schlesinger's book only provides his remarks about the number of "unchurched" people living in the colonies before the revolution (which is significant, in that it helps give the lie to "widespread"), and his specific statements about which religions were involved--and which statements coincide with what i've read elsewhere.

The contention that the "great awakening" was significant in the American south is an aburdity--i strongly question the authority for such a statement. The religions affected (one of the reasons i was trying to dig up my copy of Schlesinger) were the Congregationalists (formerly, the Puritans), the Presbyterians (derived from the Scots Kirk and the Puritans) and the Baptists. As those sects were in no considerable numbers (other than Presbyterians, but with an imporatant qualifier which i will get to later) in the American south, i doubt the word of whomever you read contending the "great awakening" was important in the south.

Most accounts of American history leave the average graduate of an American educational institution with impressions about our early history which are actually "New England-centric." Jamestown gets mentioned, and the promptly dispensed with. Yet, at the time of the American revolution, Virginia was the most populous colony. Another false impression is that the "Pilgrims," and many others came to America to gain religious freedom. They did not, they came to practice their brand of Calvinism undisturbed, and promptly expelled from their colonies those who dissented (as in Roger Williams or Sarah Hutchinson). Students are left with the impression that Puritans land at Plymouth in 1620, had a hard winter, and then were off and running. The Massachusetts bay was settled before 1620, and Samuel Maverick had made a successful settlement in the spot where Salem would one day arise. The arrival of a shipload of clueless immigrants in 1620 simply made things more difficult for those who were already there. It was not until John Winthrop arrived in Arabella in 1630 that the colony really began to grow. By 1630, Virginia was already a thriving and populous colony by comparison to any of the other North American colonies beyond the Rio Grande.

The Puritans eventually became the Congregationalists. Winthrop took a radical measure when he proposed and passed a measure with the Selectmen of the Massachusetts Bay Company to extend the franchise to any adult male who was a member in good standing of a recognized congregation. But there is a problem with this. Both Roger Williams and Sarah Hutchinson were literally driven from the colony as dangerous heretics. The earliest settlers in the area which would become the Hampshire grants (today New Hampshire and part of Vermont) were "refugees" from the religious intolerance of Massachusetts. Williams founded Rhode Island specifically to provide a haven for those who were deemed heretical by the Congregational orthodoxy. Many settlers, dissatisfied with Winthrop and their congregations, but not with Congregationalism, helped to found what would become Connecticutt. New York was then New Amsterdam, and the white inhabitants were Calvinist of the Dutch Reformed Church. Pennsylvania was a gift to William Penn by Charles II in recognition of the support given his father by Penn's father, Admiral Charles Penn, who was nothing if not profane. William Penn was a member of the Society of Friends, and the Penns apppointed the governor, effectively assuring legislative grid lock in a colony in which the wealthiest men were largely in the "Quaker" minority, but the vast majority of citizens were not Quakers. Maryland was Charles' reward to the English Catholics, and was given to Calvert, Lord Baltimore. There had been small tentative communities in what became the Carolinas in Charles' time. Georgia was not founded until the 18th century, and Oglethorp at first set it up as a penal colony.

By 1730, Massachusetts had an established church, the Congregational Church. The Congregational Church was the established church of Connecticutt as well. There was no established church in the Hampshire grants, in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The Catholic Church could not be the established church in Maryland because of the legal disabilities for Catholics in British law, so there was none there either. The Episcopalian Church was the established church of Virginia.

The Congregationalist of New England split into "New Light" and "Old Light" factions. The "Old Light" authorities used the power of the government to suppress the itinerant evangelists, and moved farily quickly. The establishment religious leaders in Connecticutt did the same, but not until much later, and the suppression of revivalism there left a particularly bitter heritage which was still smouldering on the eve of revolution. In Rhode Island, the revivalist were not even a blip on the social radar screen--those in the colonly who were still religious (likely very few) were already considered a good deal crackpot by the neighboring colonies; most people in Rhode Island were dedicated to commerce by that time, and the most popular public activities revolved around the constant scheming of one faction against another, and the governor be damned (they elected their governor, as opposed to having one appointed in London). In New York and New Jersey, the revivalism fractured the Presbyterians, who were a minority religion there. In Pennsylvania, the impact was on the Baptists, who were a minority religion there. Maryland had little interest in revivalism, and it is not stretch to suggest that the majority of whites there were "unchurched;" many were convicts or the descendants of convicts. The Anglican establishment in Virginia largely ignored the revivalism, because their grip was sure, and dissenters few. The populations of neither of the Carolinas was large, and the majority of the coastal population were either High Church or Low Church Anglicans--the former ignored revivalism, the latter found little of innovation in revivalism, which differed little from the beliefs they already held. In the mountains of the Carolinas, the settlers were in the main descended from French Calvinists and Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Neither group were affected--the former because they disdained the religious opinions of their English-speaking neighbors, the latter because their brand of Presbyterianism was already as militant and visionary as the revivalists, and they also habitually mistrusted the outsider. The Scots-Irish in both the Carolinas and upstate New York had nothing in common with the Presbyterians of the towns and cities, and paid them little heed. The rural areas west of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and the wilderness there were populated by Scots-Irish, and by German charismatics, mostly Moravians and Mennonites. Schlesinger makes a point of their disinterest in the religious beliefs and practices of the "English" as they called their neighbors, and still do to this day.

Schlesinger's important contribution to American historiography was to look at life in the towns and cities as well as in the countryside and wilderness, and to deflate the historical myths of both politically conservative and liberal historians. Both species of "historian" had throughout the years focused for their different reasons on the "rugged individualists" of the frontiers. Schlesinger was primarily responsible in the 1920's and -30's for sweeping away the myths of the frontiersmen and pointing out the significance of the merchant class and of the towns and cities, as well as pointing out the huge amount of data available on those subjects, which had been largely ignored (stupid, stupid, stupid) by previous American hitorians of the period. He also (elsewhere, not in the book i've cited) points out that the anti-Catholic prejudice is: "the deepest bias in the history of the American people." As i've already mentioned, his contention was that a great number (i think he contends the majority, although i can't say that for certain without my copy of the book) of people in the towns and cities were "unchurched." As such, they fall right off the page in most versions of American history. Before the revolution, such a status automatically exluded a person from public office, from the franchise, and, due to the prejudice of the religious, often excluded such people from any participation in economic life other than as day laborers or unskilled workers. As such people owned no property, very few records of them exist. Schlesinger was obliged, in fact, to compare the incomplete reports of the Lords of Trade with the church records and tax rolls in the colonies to determine just how many people were being left out of the reckoning, and was first drawn to the study because population estimates far outran the numbers of people whose existence were recorded in church records and on tax rolls.

So, although i am not citing Schlesinger as a source for my statement that the "great awakening" was not wide spread, i am saying the following: accounts of the G.A. ignore Catholics altogether; accounts ignore that most Presbyterians were Scots-Irish and uninvolved, and that all the Presbyterians combined were a minority relgion; the accounts ignore the German charismatics; the accounts ignore the negligible influence on Episcopalians; the accounts ignore the Dutch Reform, the French Calvinists and the Lutherans; the accounts ignore the unchurched; the accounts ignore slaves and Amerindians. Most despicable in the eyes of those who read history in the attempt to "get at" the truth, the accounts paint a rosy picture which tells the reader nothing about the great residue of bitterness against established churches and government collusion.

Your source at Britannica must have been smokin' something really good to have contended that this particular outburst of revivalism had much influence in the south.

Excuse me Thomas, but you are being either naive, dense or disingenuous--or i have an extremely uniformed view of modern German politics (which is probably a correct statement, after all if it ain't dead, it don't really interest me). My point was and is that religious belief has no place in political debate, not the rhetoric of politicians attempting to appeal to or pander to the electorate. I am not so naive as to think that one expunges all knowledge of religious text from one's speaking or writing simply because one is not an adherent of the religion in question. I was not referring to simply public speaking, but was referring to what informs the decisions of members of government. Do you suggest that Germans casually accept that politicians will make religious doctrine a significant part of their deliberations and legislation? Here, religion gets more lip service than the girl at the kissing booth--i suspect a lot of it is hypocricy, and that real attempts to introduce a religious agenda are rarely overtly acknowledged.

Yes, yes, yes. We all know writers who overuse ponderous words in an attempt to sound weighty or business letters which use pomposities like expedite instead of send, but in creative writing, different moods and types of mindset are invoked by different language. So as Carven has (succinctly) said, (see above) :wink: