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The Ragged Shreds of Slavery


Once upon a curious time ago, Fred Nyline asked me to read the Lincoln lines in Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”.   I have never been so overwhelmed in my life.  

Fred gave me a kind of abbreviated version of the score.  You can tell from my ignorance of what it is called that I was hopelessly ignorant of what was going on.   My understanding of music is limited to, “One, Two, Three, Four, Who do you appreciate?”, or something like that, by a factor of two.  

If you saw the recent movie, “Lincoln”, you will understand the quiet and scornful abuse I took when people commented on my tenor voice, certain in their conviction that mountains shook when Abraham Lincoln spoke, and the waters roiled.  I was just trying to count, “One, Two, Three, Four, now!”

It was on December 1, 1862 that Lincoln addressed Congress.  The issue was what should happen to former slaves.  The nation, Lincoln asserted, had been spellbound, captivated, itself enslaved by the fact of slavery.  

Lincoln said:  “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.  The occasion is piled hight with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.  As our case is new, so must we think anew and act anew.  We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. . . .”

“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

We were spellbound by slavery, and we had to disenthrall ourselves.  We are enthralled, still, by the ragged shreds of slavery.  

The difficulty I had, trying to read that abbreviated conductor’s score, and trying not to embarrass myself under the burden of words that shook mountains, and music that soared like freedom itself, were nothing compared to the heart-and-head-wrenching task of turning away from the captivation, the slavery, of an idea; an awful idea.  

We still hear the miserable music of racial arrogance:  that Barack Obama is “foreign”, that too many “poor people” are voting, that “takers” have their hands in the pockets of good, honest, rich people. 

The dogmas of the quiet past still are inadequate to the stormy present.  Too many young men died in that Civil War to hold to that old enthrallment.  Too many citizens marched across the bridge in Selma.  To many children died in Sandy Hook school to permit us to chant old magic slogans.  

We must rise with the occasion.   

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