My Morning Marginalia

'My Morning Marginalia', photo taken by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/ Uncategorized 

This morning I’ve been a text engineer. After having studied the Academic and Business Writing course on note-taking and annotating, I said to myself to practice it a bit more. I also had a text in mind – not too long, not too short either, but just perfect. It is about Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech (March 4^th, 1865) that I saved from my previous course with edX, Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking. I cannot tell you how happy I am when I can build on previous courses and knowledge! And this was a great opportunity.

            But the speech was in pdf and in comparison to some other times when I could do my annotations in pdf, this time I discovered that I only have a pdf reader – no annotation possible. Ah! And I was so excited to analyze Lincoln’s speech the way I studied at both the rhetoric and the academic writing courses. I was planning to refer to some literary devices that I learned in the former course and to underline the main idea of each paragraph as I learned in the latter. But my plans were put on hold. Not for too long, though, because my desire to have fun practicing this text was… I’m telling you… huge.

            I googled – obviously! – for programs that transform a pdf into word. Thrilled to have found one – that I wrongly assumed that it was also free – I started working on it: I highlighted the main ideas, I encircled some figures of speech, I ticked, clicked and when I wanted to download I was asked for a fee.

            I was planning to transform the pdf file into a Word one with all those encircling and highlighting and whatever, and then to apply the ‘comment’ option available in Word so that all those signs have meaning for everybody. In the end, I could only take a picture of the online work I did this morning and that is the way my text engineering started and ended.

Now, I guess I had to explain in words what those underlining, highlighting, and encircling are. Actually, that is the way I critically read a text. I do not write texts at the top, bottom, or at margins of the original text. I only need to look at what I underlined, highlighted, encircled, ticked, or whatever, and I remember. It only means that I understand my own notes – which is good. It is very good!

            As a preview to the speech, Abraham Lincoln was the U.S. President from 1860-64 and he was elected for a second mandate, but he was assassinated on April 14^th, 1865 – one month after he held this second inaugural speech. His mandate coincided with the American Civil War (1861-65) between the slavery abolitionist North and the slavery defendant South – every time I think of this war, I remember the great classical movie ‘North and South’ (with Kristie Alley, Patrick Swayze, etc.) that I watched two or three times.

The speech of the second inaugural has five main paragraphs. In the first paragraph, the main idea is that this is a kind of an atypical speech and more of a ‘statement in detail of a course to be pursued’ – an idea that he developed in the following paragraphs that unfold outstandingly. I particularly loved this paragraph the musicality of it through short alliterations and assonances: ‘point and phrase’, ‘absorb the attention’, ‘engrosses energy’, and ‘with high hope for the future’.

            The second paragraph’s main idea is the civil war – the ‘course to be pursued’ from the first paragraph has, now, a concrete name. It starts with an ellipsis: ‘all dreaded it – all sought to avert it’. And the verbs of the entire paragraph continue this opposition of to dread and to seek. Those dreading it were ‘devoted to saving’, and those seeking it were ‘seeking to destroy’ or ‘seeking to dissolve the Union’ – the choice of verbs with ‘d’ and ‘s’ contribute to the continuation of word musicality in this second paragraph. There is also the verb ‘deprecate’(the war). The paragraph ends with ‘the war came’.

            The third paragraph is about the reason for this war: one-eighth of the population was black population. Its main idea is explicitly stated as follows: ‘…these slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of this war.’ This paragraph reveals the sides involved in the war: insurgents against the government. Personally, I consider the use of statistics in this paragraph more than just a device, but concrete information that speaks of the proportion of the black population in America in 1865.

            The fourth paragraph is about the magnitude and the duration of this war that neither party expected, nor anticipated, and prayers of neither were listened to, although both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God (similarity) asking for His ‘aid’ or ‘assistance.'

            The fifth paragraph continues the idea of God. Lincoln gave thought to the ‘Almighty’s purpose’ for allowing this war. And it does that through two quotes: at the beginning of the paragraph alluding to Matthew 18:7, and at the end of the paragraph, alluding to Psalm 19:9. The ‘Psalms’ have perfect lyrics, and only by mentioning them Lincoln described music.

            The one-page historical and artistically written speech ends with the idea ‘let us finish the work we are in’, meaning the civil war. The way the passage was made from a paragraph on the Almighty God and biblical quotes to the main concluding idea is through three essential words: ‘no malice’, ‘clarity’, and faith. It also defines what ‘to finish’ means: to ‘bind up’, ‘to care’, and ‘to do’.

Returning to the course on Academic and Business Writing, I can tell that my notes confirmed the logical unfolding of the text, the outstanding organization of the thoughts on paper, and their artistic formulation that all confirm the main idea of a statement in detail of a civil war course involving insurgents and government to be pursued and that will end with God’s help. 

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