GETTYSBURG - President Lincoln met with reporters here today immediately following a dedication ceremony for the Soldiers National Cemetery in an effort to assure the country that we are not in the midst of a civil war.
Lincoln, who delivered an address critics are calling "of little note, lackluster, and devoid of a single memorable phrase," was in a combative mood at his press conference. When UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas asked Lincoln whether or not the escalating violence across the nation meant we were drifting into a civil war, Lincoln evaded the question. "I'm not ready to call it that," he said. When Thomas asked how he would define the conflict, Lincoln said he saw it as a war between "evildoers and gooddoers." Lincoln added that he believed this is how future historians would identify the clash between the Union and the Confederacy for the duration of time.
The President fielded several other questions, ranging from the innocuous "Boxers or briefs?" to the substantive. One man asked Lincoln how he feels about calls for the dismissal of embattled Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. "Eddie's doin' a heckuva job," he said. Inevitably, the questions returned to the war, and what it should be called. Increasingly, the President grew irritable. "Look, to me a civil war is a lot like pornography," he said. "I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it."
