Reading The Gettysburg Address On The Bicentennial Of Abraham Lincoln's Birth
Floor Speech
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today marks the bicentennial of the birth of America's greatest President, Abraham Lincoln. This morning, as part of the nationwide celebration of this historic anniversary, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in my hometown of Springfield, IL, is sponsoring a simultaneous reading of the Gettysburg Address by schoolchildren from coast to coast. I remember as a schoolchild memorizing the Gettysburg Address. I am happy to see that a new generation of American children is studying what many consider to be the greatest speech in our Nation's history.
But we can all learn from Lincoln. We are never too old. So this morning we in the Senate will also listen to the speech that many consider the greatest summation in our Nation's history of the meaning and price of freedom.
After that, some of us will take the floor and share our thoughts on President Lincoln's immortal words and his powerful and enduring legacy.
These are the words President Abraham Lincoln spoke on the blood-drenched battlefield in Gettysburg, PA, on November 19, 1863:
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 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 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.
The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania was the largest battle ever fought on American soil. In the third summer of the Civil War, the Army of the Potomac met the Army of Northern Virginia at a crossroads near the small market town of Gettysburg, PA. For 3 brutal days, from July 1 to July 3, more than 160,000 American solders clashed in what would prove to be a decisive Union victory and a turning point in the war.
When the cannons and guns fell silent on July 4, our Nation's birthday, more than 51,000 Confederate and Union soldiers were wounded, missing, or dead. And 4 1/2 months later, when President Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to help dedicate America's first national cemetery, the battlefield was still covered with scars and signs of the carnage.
One soldier recalled, `` ..... all about were traces of the fierce conflict. Rifle pits, cut and scarred trees, broken fences, pieces of artillery wagons and harness, scraps of blue and gray clothing, bent canteens ..... ''
President Lincoln was not supposed to be the main speaker at this dedication. In fact, there was a 2-hour speech given by Edward Everett, who was considered one of the great orators of his day. Abraham Lincoln's remarks took 2 minutes. They were so brief that when he finished, many in the crowd of 30,000 were not even sure he had spoken. Yet his words continue to inspire the world and the Nation today. In 272 words is what it took for President Lincoln to explain to a war-weary nation why it must continue to fight. He called on the Nation to look up from the devastation and division of the war to a higher purpose. He redefined the meaning and the value of the continuing struggle: ``that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom.''
He said that the ceremony at Gettysburg was more than the consecration of a cemetery; it represented an opportunity and an obligation for us, the living, to finish the work of those who had fallen there, to ensure that ``this government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.''
It may have been the greatest speech in American history. Yet, after President Lincoln delivered it, there was only polite applause. On his trip back to Washington, Lincoln expressed disappointment. He said of his address, ``It was a flat failure. I am distressed about it. I ought to have prepared it with more care.''
The Chicago Times was even less charitable. They editorialized and said:
The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the president.
Edward Everett, the famed orator and former Governor of Massachusetts who had been the main speaker at Gettysburg, was one of the first to recognize the greatness of Lincoln's words. Within days, he wrote to the President, ``I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.''
In June 1865, in his eulogy to the fallen President, the fiery abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner called the Gettysburg Address ``a monumental act.'' He said President Lincoln had been mistaken when he predicted that ``the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.'' The truth, Senator Sumner said, is that ``[t]he world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech.''
President Lincoln did not live to see his legacy: a United States of America that has endured, a nation so far removed from the hated institution of legalized human slavery that today President Lincoln's old office in the White House is occupied by our first African-American President.
As we commemorate today the 200th birthday of the man whose leadership saved our Union, saved our Nation and created a new birth of freedom, let us pledge that we too will dedicate ourselves to preserving his legacy and continuing the still-unfinished work for America.
I yield the floor.
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