fandomhigh | Firsthand History- Monday- 1st period

Class today was being held in a cemetery in the Danger Shop. It was crowded, full of soldiers and civilians, and somewhere in the middle of it, a man was speaking.

"Welcome to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863," Kitty began, keeping her voice a little quieter than usual because Danger Shop or not, someone was giving a speech and she didn't want to be rude. ~~Also it always took place in the future.~~ "Here's the really awful backstory to this: When the country was founded, there were already people in Africa being kidnapped, thrown on a ship to the States, and sold into slavery as property to do all the work in the fields and in the house. Most of the founding fathers had slaves. They were brought here, lived here, given new names by their 'masters', and raised families. Entire generations went on like this. And people thought it was fine, because they thought if they put a roof over a slave's head and gave them what they thought was good treatment, then there was no problem. It didn't matter that slaves could be beaten and mistreated, never allowed to live their own life or make their own decisions for themselves or their families, because they were property, not people.

"And then people started cluing in that hey, it's wrong to enslave people, and it's really wrong to do so because their skin color didn't match yours. There was a movement to ban slavery, and the northern states were in the process of ending it if they hadn't already, but there were some southern states that really weren't willing to give it up. The 1860 election had a very big focus on banning slavery, and after Abraham Lincoln was elected, the southern states seceded to become the Confederate States. So if you hear anything about the confederate flag these days, you'll get a very big clue as to why that's seen as problematic," Kitty added. "In 1861, the American Civil War began, between the northern Union army and the southern Confederate Army. It's America's bloodiest war, because it was us doing all the fighting. Over 655,000 people died, and 419,000 were wounded.

"The war would end in 1865, with a Union win. Slavery was abolished, the country was reunited and began the process of rebuilding. If you want to know more about this, there are plenty of books and movies I can recommend for you," Kitty offered. "And Lincoln is to this day widely regarded as the best president we've ever had, though he was assassinated in 1865, five days after the Confederates surrendered. Where we are now is Gettysburg, right in the middle of the war. There was a battle here four months ago, known as the war's turning point, and it was turned into a cemetery for those who had died here. Right now it's Edward Everett speaking. It's a two-hour speech, and they thought it would be a highlight of the ceremony. Instead you're going to hear one of the greatest speeches ever written in a minute, and it was written on an envelope."

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Like this is not how you expected to start your Monday.

Gratuity Tucci

Hyacinthe

Khadgar

Rufus Shinra

Negasonic Teenage Warhead

Cosette Fauchelevent

Or you could listen to the tail end of a two-hour speech, if that's your thing.

Tip didn't actually do either. Growing up in Pennsylvania meant that Gettysburg was pretty familiar to her; she'd gone on more than one field trip to visit the battlefield before the Boov showed up. The cemetery was low enough to the ground that it hadn't taken much damage in the Boov attack, but it was still something to see it as it originally was, with no tourists or visitor's centers, and only cannon holes in the landscape, instead of the gaping, empty ones made by Boov weaponry.

Learning about the civil war had always been slightly fraught for her. She didn't know her father at all, and knew even less about her black ancestors, but she knew odds were very good that at least one branch of her family tree had been enslaved. Occasionally, the nastier white kids would use this as ammunition to tease her and the other black students. Mostly though, it just reminded her of the hole in her personal history. She didn't miss having a father growing up. She did miss knowing anything at all about her roots.

So -- yeah. She wasn't much interested in what the teacher had to say about this event. She could actually recite the speech coming up from memory. She ducked back from the class group instead, looking for a quiet spot to watch from. See how the Danger Shop reenactment compared to the ones done by college students and civil war buffs that she'd grown up with.

After Kitty had finished speaking, Hyacinthe sought Gratuity out; she was the one who had told him about this first after all. However, when he found her a little ways away, he paused, unwilling to intrude on what might be a personal moment.

He figured she would let him know if she were interested in speaking to him right now. If not, and he'd not blame her for it, he had no problems leaving her to her thoughts.

Tip nodded to him with a small smile. "Hey." She nodded towards the left. "That's where they built the visitor's center." She was pretty sure, and hey, it wasn't like Hyacinthe could call her on it if she was wrong. "The Boov wiped it out because they thought the war reenactors had actual weapons. They left the cemetery alone, though."

Hyacinthe found the subject of the entire lecture distasteful. Slavery was not unknown to him in a general, historical sense, but most of the slavery he had heard of was not chattel slavery. Skaldic warriors might take slaves after a battle, but the slaves could sometimes be ransomed, or win back their freedom and even those that did not, their children weren't born slaves as well. The Tsingani saw Night Court contracts as a kind of slavery, too, which was why Phedre was vrajna to him until she made her marque, but it was more an indenture than anything like this.

And this--this choosing an entire race to enslave simply because they looked different? Repugnant. Once again, Hya was grateful the Tsingani were a free people and Terre D'Ange was civilized, for all they lacked the niceties of plumbing or electric lighting.

Khadgar was unsettled from the start by the fact that they were in a cemetery, and he could scarcely imagine so many people dying in a war. This world seemed so civilized that it was hard to imagine people being so awful to one another, but when he thought about some of the in-fighting that happened at home... well, he was just glad things were better now, sort of.

After the first guy stopped talking, a possibly familiar and very tall man began to speak.

"Four score 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 battlefield 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 can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not 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 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."

Tip smiled. She had no idea how these computer programs constructed their reenactments -- from historical documents? Time travel? -- but they were definitely more interesting than listening to a guy who peed on his buttons for "historical accuracy" give his rendition. She was tempted to clap at the end, but wasn't sure if that'd be weird.

It's possible that as a mutant Jewish woman this election was having an influence on what she was using in her syllabus.

Possibly.

And now sleep.

Firsthand History- Monday- 1st period

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The Gettysburg Address

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