Schakowsky Statement Celebrating the 200th Birthday of President Abraham Lincoln

SCHAKOWSKY STATEMENT CELEBRATING THE 200th BIRTHDAY OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Washington, D.C.–U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic Chief Deputy Whip, entered the following statement today into the Congressional Record in honor of President Abraham Lincoln's 200th Birthday.

Madame Speaker, I rise today to add my voice in celebration of today's Lincoln Bicentennial. In Illinois — the Land of Lincoln — we always cherish our 16th President, taking pride in a man who steered this nation through turbulent times and whose legacy continues to guide us today. Today we all join in recognizing his greatness.

There have been many, many books written about President Lincoln, detailing his remarkable life and his towering achievements. I want to encourage my colleagues to explore one of those books, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.... Written by Garry Wills, my constituent and a professor at Northwestern University, this Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis underscores why the Gettysburg Address remains the most well-known speech in American history.

President Lincoln spoke on the battlefield where 50,000 Americans were killed or wounded. He certainly didn't realize that the words in his short oration would be recited by schoolchildren across the nation. He said that "the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.... In this instance, he was wrong.

President Lincoln didn't just speak in memory of those who had fought and died in the battle. He used his oration to instruct, inspire and set a vision for our nation's future. He asked those who were present at Gettysburg and those of us who today study his words to remember the very ideals on which our nation was founded. He began by asking us to recall that our nation was "conceived in Liberty... and equality. As Professor Wills writes,

"Lincoln was able to achieve the loftiness, ideality, and brevity of the Gettysburg Address because he had spent a good part of the 1850s repeatedly relating all the most sensitive issues of the day to the Declaration's supreme principle. If all men are created equal, they cannot be property. They cannot by ruled by owner-monarchs…Their equality cannot be denied if the nation is to live by its creed, and voice it, and test it, and die for it….a nation free to proclaim its ideal is freed, again, to approximate that ideal over the years, in ways that run far beyond any specific or limited reforms…...

The theme of liberty and equality runs through the Gettysburg Address, just as it ran through the entire life of President Lincoln. His very life was a symbol of our country — a boy of humble beginnings who through hard work and his own talents was able not just to become President of the United States but to become a symbol of democracy across the generations and across the globe. Because of his confidence in the ideals and potential of America, he was able to give a speech of hope at a time unprecedented crisis in our country.

The Gettysburg Address ends with a clarion call for "a new birth of freedom.... His faith in our country — in a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people... — continues to inspire us in the United States and proponents of participatory democracy across the globe.

President Lincoln is recognized for what he did for our country — not just his actions but also his words. As Professors Wills says, "Words were weapons for him, even though he meant them to be weapons of peace in the midst of war.... He continues,

"Lincoln does not argue law or history, as Daniel Webster did. He makes history. He does not come to present a theory, but to impose a symbol, one tested in experience and appealing to national values, with an emotional urgency entirely expressed in calm abstractions (fire in ice). He came to change the world, to effect an intellectual revolution. No other words could have done it. The miracle is that these words did. In his brief time before the crowd at Gettysburg he wove a spell that has not, yet, been broken — he called up a new nation out of the blood and trauma....

As we celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial, our nation is faced with serious economic and global challenges; and President Lincoln's words still guide us today. He understood that the core of our nation is our commitment to liberty and equality — not just under the law but in the opportunity for every individual to achieve and prosper. He reminded us that our government must recognize its responsibility to the public good and encourage public participation and investment in that government.

In these trying times, we are fortunate to have another President who has the ability to inspire, to lead and to act to bring us out of crisis. Like President Lincoln, President Obama's life is a model of not just of what an individual can achieve given the opportunity to succeed but what our nation can accomplish when we remember our founding values of liberty and equality.