Honoring President Lincoln

WASHINGTON -- Today, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05) honored President Lincoln on the eve of his 205th birthday, and called for a re-dedication to our nation's unfinished work of equality for all.

Below is a video and transcript of the speech.

Mr. Speaker, Seven score and twelve years ago, another gentleman from Illinois went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to dedicate the four month old, still unfinished Union cemetery at the site of one of the bloodiest battles in American history.

There he would give one of our nation's defining speeches.

Amazingly, President Lincoln's address was not even the main event of that day.

Edward Everett, former president of Harvard, was the event's main speaker, spending two hours lecturing about ancient Greece and how that society honored their fallen soldiers.

Everett later wrote, "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 President Lincoln did in two minutes."

Because in the two and a half minutes Lincoln spoke, he did more than honor our fallen soldiers.

In 272 eloquent words, he reminded us that we live in a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He asked "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

In his address, the president also issued a challenge to his contemporaries and generations of Americans thereafter, saying: "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."

And he concluded that our nation: "shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from this Earth."

In his address, I believe President Lincoln was asking the question, "What do we, as Americans, mean when we say ‘all of us are created equal?'"

In the over 150 years since the Gettysburg Address, we've had our struggles, but we've also had our successes.

We suffered the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, but we also experienced the redemption of Brown v. Board of Education.

We allowed the women of this nation to remain disenfranchised for more than a century, but we also passed the 19th Amendment which affirmed women's right to vote.

We lived through the travesties of Jim Crow, but we also celebrated the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

We watched Truman's Executive Action to desegregate our military.

We passed Don't Ask, Don't Tell and then repealed it. We passed DOMA. We now witness the legalization of same-sex marriage in 37 states and the District of Columbia.

All of these examples serve as reminders of the difficulties in ensuring equality for all. But they also demonstrate a nation that has responded to challenge and has been reborn. Each time we've come a little closer to living up the ideal that "all of us are created equal."

To paraphrase Dr. King, the moral arc of our nation may be long, but as history shows us, it bends towards justice, equality and freedom.

In times of dissonance, inequality and injustice, great leaders like Lincoln have reminded us of our nation's true purpose: equality.

On Lincoln's birthday, let's re-dedicate ourselves to our nation's unfinished work.

Let's ensure that women get equal pay for equal work.

Let's recognize that all love is equal and extend marriage rights to all our citizens once and for all.

Let's strengthen the Voting Rights Act to guarantee that no one is disenfranchised and all Americans have access to this fundamental right.

Let's finish the work the Senate has started, and pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill.

Let's pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act so that no American can be fired simply because of who they love or who they are.

Let's allow our neighbors and friends who put in a full day's work, whether in the mail room or the board room, to provide their families with a living wage.

Lincoln modestly believed that "no one would long remember" his address that day at Gettysburg. But, we do remember and strive to honor those who have sacrificed and struggled, and continue to struggle, for equality.

Because we believe, as Dr. King spoke of on the steps of Lincoln's own scared memorial,

"That one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Thank you and I yield back.