To X-II:
Ah, June, it was great. I saw he worked on it and worked on it. That was the real Joe there. It is clear to me that there has been a battle for his soul in this campaign. He doesn’t want to beat on Trump like a pinata and I and other more important people have had doubts about that strategy. This speech ended that debate and silenced us sometime-critics. He HAS always worked with Republicans, including some racists. It is just in the guy’s soul to see any good in anybody. And when he can’t he says “We WILL.” It was to me a philosophical speech—that’s his philosophy.
The setting could not have been more apt. A few times I thought, “It’s at Gettysburg, too.” That is sacred soil to the nation and, you can imagine, to Pennsylvanians especially. If you’re a Pennsylvanian, you make that pilgrimage at least once in your life. I have been there as a boy and then several years ago as an adult, on the anniversary. It was a three-day battle and June, there is a *hush* at Gettysburg that is eerie. It doesn’t matter if there are reenactments going on and crowds, there’s just this hush. I stood at the edge of the forest and walked across the Wheatfield just as Pickett’s Southerners did and I literally wept. Called [my brother-the-klansman] and just wept.
Gettysburg is in honor of the Confederacy as much as the Union. It is a place where the divisions in our country’s history have always come together, just as Biden urged today. That's what I meant by a circuit-breaker. Up through the 75th anniversary of the Battle there were Gettysburg Reunions of Blue and Gray. At the last one octogenarian Southerners marched across the Wheatfield and when they got to the Stone Wall the Blue vets were so moved they groaned and came over the wall and hugged the Rebels and wept just as I did. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, looking on, said it was a “transcendental moment.” Just as Joe’s speech transcended.
The whole speech was just perfect.