My Problem With Equality: Being Honestly Honest About Honest Abe Before Gettysburg...and After

Equal? To What?

Five years before President “Freed-the-Slaves” Lincoln gave his famous and exalted two minute speech known as the Gettysburg Address, he gave another speech. If you are reading these words you are, clearly, familiar with Gettysburg and its referenced speech. However, you are likely unfamiliar (and ask yourself why) with Lincoln’s speech on September 18, 1858. It was considerably longer than a scanty two minutes.

Brace for enlightenment.

In what will be a historic looming general election, wistful, nostalgic, absolutionist and self aggrandizing Abraham Lincoln references abound by both duopolistic candidates; especially given the prevailing Chitlin’ Circuit dynamics. I suspect that this “election,” as it were, will alter the political landscape in the United States for at least the next several decades (assuming the United States still exists). But that is simply my highly subjective opinion.

Begin The Beguine

Like you, I was indoctrinated to Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address as a young child. By the time I was in sixth grade (at nine years old), I knew the thing by rote. The famous two minute event occurred on November 19, 1863. Here is that two minute speech in its entirety.

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lofty, schmaltzy and platitudinal, no doubt. I won’t go as far as to describe same as idealistic because, at least for me, that would be a bridge too far. Owing to the fact that from where I sit it is not a question as to whether or not Mr. Lincoln was full of shit, it is a matter of how much. Nonetheless, in his defense (if you wish to frame it as such) he was no different than the ilk from which he was manufactured.

It would take the aforementioned nine-year old sixth grader another three decades to learn of another speech by Mr. FTS (Freed-the-Slaves). Oddly enough, and understand that I spent years in an elite military scholastic environment, at about that same time I learned of the third verse of The Star Spangled Banner. I had managed to live almost 40 years and never, ever knew about either. I cannot help but wonder why. I bet it’s news to you, too.

Alright, alright, I know why. I was just livening things up with a wee bit of sarcasm. I trust you will forgive such horrific transgression. My sincerest condolences if you find yourself unable to do so.

I will now, with all due pomp and circumstance, share with you Lincoln’s lengthy speech (much longer than two minutes) five years before the hallowed Gettysburg Address. For the sake of journalistic economy, I will refrain from reproducing the entire transcript here. However, I will provide both a link to that speech and a salient excerpt.

Note the “laughter” and “applause.”

“While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness-and that is the case of Judge Douglas's old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson. [Laughter.] I will also add to the remarks I have made (for I am not going to enter at large upon this subject,) that I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, [laughter] but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, [roars of laughter] I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes. [Continued laughter and applause.] I will add one further word, which is this: that I do not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of the negro and the white man can be made except in the State Legislature-not in the Congress of the United States-and as I do not really apprehend the approach of any such thing myself, and as Judge Douglas seems to be in constant horror that some such danger is rapidly approaching, I propose as the best means to prevent it that the Judge be kept at home and placed in the State Legislature to fight the measure. [Uproarious laughter and applause.] I do not propose dwelling longer at this time on this subject.” Lincoln Fourth Debate Speech 1858

I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to add.

No need.

“Equality”

Some months ago, I mentioned to one of my mentors that “white supremacy is the ability to define what white supremacy is…to control the narrative and define the terms.” Chances are, you would fall on your proverbial sword and swear you are not a white supremacist (and you do not have to be of any particular ethnicity to be one as white supremacy is a matter of Uni-think and narrative control). This fact is blatantly obvious pertinent to the term “equality.”

Now, I am going to have to be a bit unpolished, unpleasant but not unreal, unbuffered, unencumbered, unbridled, unruly, uncontrollable and downright raw, here. What hubris makes you think I desire to be equal to you? Who are you to be equal to? Am I equal because you say I am and what arrogance allows that? Do you, honestly, think I want to run around in white pajamas with a pillow case on my head whilst I burn one of the most sacred religious icons in the world? Do you think I want to be equal to motherfuckers that bomb little black babies attending Sunday school? Do you think I want to have picnics and take photographs of my children smiling broadly as a man or woman swings from a tree as they froth at the mouth and their eyes bulge out of their sockets?

Do you think I want to drop nuclear bombs on civilians? Do you think I want to kill children for the resources of other nations? Do you think I want to call myself “great” while millions of my brethren go hungry and languish on the streets as I throw away food? Do you think I want to emulate a society whose citizens shoot up churches, mosques, synagogues, grocery stores, movie theaters and schools? Do you think I want to shoot 13 year old European-American babies multiple times in the chest as they play in a park under “color” of law? Do you think I want to put people in ovens? Do you think I want to otherwise, literally, cook people in an electric chair? Fuck being “equal” to you because you ain’t nothing to be equal to. My aspirations as a person far exceed that; you need to be trying to be equal to the rest of the world.

And that is my problem with “equality.”

April 18, 1864 in Baltimore, Maryland

I shall conclude with the words of Mr. Lincoln half a year after his Gettysburg Address for he, himself, can finish this piece far better than my pathetic and paltry intellect allows.

“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.”