Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, this commission has worked for a few years now to help pay homage to commemorate the life of, from my perspective, the most extraordinary American who ever lived:…
Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, this commission has worked for a few years now to help pay homage to commemorate the life of, from my perspective, the most extraordinary American who ever lived: Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln was our 16th President who, today, would have been 200 years old. This President's impact on the lives of every American has been told in more books than any book written on any single figure in human history.
I have been honored and privileged by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve as the Democratic representative on the extraordinary commission that has worked tirelessly to pay, globally, the kind of homage to the 16th President that President Abraham Lincoln deserves.
I got up early this morning and went to a dedication ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial. And there, Mr. Speaker, I had this awesome sense of the impact, in my own small way, that the 16th President had on his generation of Americans.
To look at that extraordinary temple, to see the figure, the enormous figure of Abraham Lincoln recessed into the temple with a constant vigilance over our Republic, even in death, the presence of Abraham Lincoln is felt and it is awe inspiring.
To see President Lincoln looking out over the National Mall, looking out over the activities of the Congress of the United States, gives him a sense of divine presence in the life of our democracy. In fact, he becomes, and is, the most pre-eminent figure in American history.
And as you sit there looking at the enormity of the temple, it's not that Lincoln is looking over us; it's also that we look to Lincoln for guidance. In other words, because Mr. Lincoln offered the last full measure of his devotion, saved the Union and saved our country, President Abraham Lincoln has earned the trust of the American people.
And since his Presidency, very few Presidents of the United States have not ventured in deep and reflective thought upon the single proposition of what is it that Mr. Lincoln would have me do. Members of Congress and others who have entered into public life throughout this country, they look to the example of Lincoln knowing that he gave the last full measure of his devotion to keep this country together, to guarantee for us the future; that even as our newest President, President Barack Obama, said today in the Capitol Rotunda, he said, ``It seems that the problems that we have as Americans are small compared to the problems that Mr. Lincoln dealt with. And yet, Mr. Lincoln persevered.''
Sure. We're arguing about to vote for the stimulus or to not vote for the stimulus, to support the President's agenda or to not support the President's agenda, to help our economy, and from some others' perspective to not help our economy.
But the central issues that we deal with, President Barack Obama said are small by comparison to the issues that Lincoln dealt with. We owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.
There have been some questions raised during the Lincoln bicentennial about whether or not Abraham Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. And I came to the floor tonight, Mr. Speaker, to address three central issues.
The first part of my presentation is to answer the question, Did Lincoln free the slaves. The second part of my presentation tonight, Mr. Speaker, is to answer the question, What is it that Lincoln saw. And it's in that second part of the presentation that we will venture back through American history to understand the complex issues that Abraham Lincoln had to deal with--and I apologize for the limitations upon my time to answer all of those questions.
And I hope tonight, Mr. Speaker, to close on the future that Abraham Lincoln guaranteed for all of us. I hope to accomplish this in the allotted time frame.
Interpreting Lincoln's life and work is extremely important. It's important to the past, it's important to the present, and it's important to the future. It's why I've come here tonight to lay before the House of Representatives my understanding of that interpretation.
Recently, there have been questions raised as to whether Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. The argument goes, given some of Lincoln's history, his racial attitudes and statements, his moderate views on the subject, his noninterference with slavery where it already existed, his once proposed solution of colonization, his gradualist approach to ending the institution, his hesitancy with respect to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and using colored troops in the war, his late conversion to limited voting rights for blacks and more, why should Abraham Lincoln be credited with freeing the slaves?
Some have even argued that it was the various actions taken by the slaves, including the power given to the Union cause as a result of the moral case for overturning slavery, plus the actual military role of working and fighting in the Union campaigns that actually freed the slaves.
I've heard the arguments. I've read the arguments of our Nation's most profound historians who make this case.
By forcing the Emancipation Proclamation issue on to the agenda, first of military officers, then of the Congress of the United States-- which we all know then and now know to be reluctant--and finally of Lincoln, it was their actions, the actions of the slaves themselves that led to their freedom.
I think when looking at this argument--clearly just as the Congress and President Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to pass and sign the civil rights and social legislation of the 1960s apart from a modern civil and human rights movement--so, too, the military commanders, the Congress, and Lincoln would not have been able to achieve what they did without the agitation and the movement of the slaves and their allies. There is no doubt about that.
On the other hand, the slaves would not have become freed men apart from what these leaders did. Because historical interpretation has played up the role of white male leaders while playing down the role of mass movements and leaders of color and women, our understanding of history has been skewed. Some of the current put-down of traditional historical interpretation is legitimate rejection and reaction to this past, limited, and distorted understanding and interpretation of our history.
The search now, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me, should be for a more balanced interpretation, which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players in proper balance and perspective. That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to the question did Lincoln free the slaves.
To answer this question, James McPherson says in ``Drawn with the Sword,'' that we must first ask what was the essential condition, the one thing without which it would not have happened? And the clear answer, the clear answer to the essential condition, the one thing without which it would not have happened, is the war.
Slavery had existed for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. It was more deeply entrenched in the South than ever. And every effort at self- emancipation--and there were plenty--had failed.
He said, ``Without the civil war, there would have been no Confiscation Act, no Emancipation Proclamation, no 13th amendment to the Constitution, not to mention a 14th and a 15th amendment, and almost certainly no end of slavery for several more decades, at least.''
Fifteen Presidents before Abraham Lincoln had failed to sustain all of these forces to bring the politics of a peculiar institution to a moral head in our Nation.
As to the first question, what brought on the war, there are two interrelated answers.
What brought on the war was slavery.
What triggered the war was disunion over the issue of slavery. Disunion resulted because initially 7, and ultimately 11, Southern States saw Lincoln as an anti-slavery advocate and candidate, running in an anti-slavery party on an anti-slavery platform who would be an anti-slavery President. Rather than abide such a black President and black Republican party, Southern States, led by the Democratic Party, severed their ties to the Union.
Through secession, which Lincoln and the Union refused to accept, they went to war over preserving the Union. While Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to stand where it stood from 1854 when he reentered politics onward, Lincoln never wavered or compromised on one central issue, one central issue, the extension of slavery into the territories. And while gradual in his approach, Lincoln and the slave States of the South knew this would eventually mean the end of slavery.
It was Lincoln who brought out and sustained all of these factors. Thus, while Lincoln's primary emphasis throughout was on saving the Union, the result of saving the Union was emancipation for the slaves. If the Union had not been preserved, slavery would not have been ended and may have even been strengthened.
In fact, the first 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the very first one, passed the Congress of the United States, and only the secession of States from the Union kept that 13th amendment from being added to the Constitution. It was the 13th amendment that would have allowed slavery to exist in all States and all territories.
Lincoln strategically understood that the Union was a common ground issue. It wasn't about black. It wasn't about white. It wasn't about slavery versus non-slavery. Lincoln said, Whatever your position is on the question of slavery, no State has the right to leave the Union. The Union became the rallying cry, the common ground issue around which he could rally the American people.
Some of us want the American people rallied around whatever we want them rallied around, but from the perspective of a President, particularly Abraham Lincoln, keeping the country together was central.
Today, we have agreements and disagreements with President Barack Obama, but President Barack Obama sees something that we don't see, unprecedented economic catastrophe. And he's driven by saving our country for future generations, not by tax cuts versus spending or spending versus tax cuts, but a way to work our way out of the economic condition that we find ourselves in. And so the language that the President uses is about saving all of us.
Look at Lincoln in perspective. By holding the coalition together around the issue of the Union, enough Unionists eventually saw the connection between the two issues that he could ease into emancipation in the middle of the war when it gave the North a huge boost.
Even when Lincoln believed he was going to lose the presidency in August of 1864 he said, There have been men who proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors who had fought for the Union. I should be damned in time and eternity for doing so. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will.
In effect, our 16th President was saying that he would rather be right than President, and as matters turned out, he was both right and President.
Clearly, Mr. Speaker, many slaves did self-emancipate themselves through the Underground Railroad before the war and throughout and even during the war, but even so, this is not the same as bringing an end to the peculiar institution of slavery, which only the Civil War and Lincoln's leadership did.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, by pronouncing slavery a moral evil that must come to an end and then winning the Presidency of the United States in 1860, provoking the South to secede by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion, or on Fort Sumter, by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Unionist coalition together in the first year of the war and committed it to emancipation in the second, and by refusing to compromise this policy once he had adopted it, and by prosecuting the war to unconditional victory as Commander in Chief of an Army of liberation, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. All of these factors came together in President Abraham Lincoln.
Now, did he sign the Emancipation Proclamation? Of course he did. Was it a political act? Of course, it may have been. In 1862, President Lincoln had Northern free States that were committed to staying in the Union where slavery was already illegal. He had border States all around the Nation's capital where slavery was legal, but these border States agreed, from their perspective, that while they felt they had the right to maintain slavery, they did not believe the South had the right to leave the Union.
And so Lincoln had to balance the politics of Members of Congress who were running in mid-term election saying, you know, I'm for keeping slavery alive in Maryland, but I also believe that our State needs to stay in the Union. Now, if I catch Mr. Lincoln saying something like this is about slavery, then I'm going to say we need to join the South because this is about our property.
Lincoln had to balance the politics of Members of Congress and balance the politics of Senators and balance the politics of Governors who were threatening to join the Confederacy but chose to stay in the Union because they agreed with Abraham Lincoln's position that the South did not have the right to secede.
Other States in the South, before he was even sworn in as President, had left the Union, and yet Abraham Lincoln from the outset pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to an end. And then winning the Presidency in 1860, some of us believe that slavery was a moral end at that time, and it was a moral disgrace at that time, but it's one thing to advocate for it. It's another thing to advocate for the slavery being a moral inconsistency and immoral and wrong and run for President on that position.
He pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to end, and he won the Presidency, and because he pronounced it and because he won, the South seceded. And by refusing to compromise
on the issue of slavery's expansion into the western territory, which would have brought more pro-Confederate congressmen to the Congress and more Confederate pro-States rights Senators to the United States Senate, the President of the United States refused to compromise. No, not in the western States, you do not have the right the carry the institution into the Western States or on Fort Sumter.
And by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Unionist coalition together in the first year of the war, and committed it to emancipation in the second, by refusing to compromise this policy once he had adopted it and by prosecuting the war to an unconditional victory as Commander in Chief of an Army of liberation, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Fifteen Presidents before him, Mr. Speaker, did not do that.
And so, Mr. Speaker, I would like to now turn my attention to what Lincoln saw, having at least in my own mind settled the question that the 16th President was divinely inspired and helped define a brand new and very different future for America. So I think it most appropriate, Mr. Speaker, to start with the question: What did Lincoln see? What did Abraham Lincoln see?
Well, we know that the 16th President of the United States was assassinated in 1865, and given the depth of his writings, the speeches that he delivered and thousands of books written by Lincoln historians, Lincoln, who passed in 1865 by assassination, understood all of American history up until this point, which means Abraham Lincoln clearly understood that just as we commemorated and memorialized the 19 Africans who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, Abraham Lincoln saw that. Those 19 Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, 157 years before the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln understood that on July 4, 1776, when our Founding Fathers and the Founding Fathers of this Republic issued the magnificent words that Martin Luther King called the magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, that this document, this question of equality, this question of the idea that all men and women are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I heard a Presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, this morning deliver an oration at the commemoration celebration in the Rotunda, and she said that as President Abraham Lincoln was riding the train from Illinois through Pennsylvania, he stopped in the hall where the Declaration of Independence had been written. And when he walked out of the hall, a number of people in the crowd began chanting as the 16th President was heading to his inauguration, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln, would you please give a speech.
And according to Doris Kearns Goodwin, as best my recollection as I can remember, she said this morning that Mr. Lincoln walked out of the Liberty Hall and said: I've often pondered what the men who were in this room thinking when they issued the Declaration of Independence. I've often pondered what was on their mind when they advanced the idea that all men are created equal. I've often thought about what they were thinking and how I would imagine how divinely inspired they were to utter such immortal words on that occasion.
And yet, by 1787, when our Constitution is written, the biggest sticking point, even while the Founding Fathers had declared in the Declaration of Independence, in that Constitutional Convention was a sticking point about how slaves should be counted for the purposes of representation. In 1776, all men are created equal to the date in 1787 about how human beings should be treated is a significant departure from the founding principle of this Nation.
The other big debate at the Constitutional Convention, which Abraham Lincoln clearly understood, was the debate between big States versus small States and Northern States versus Southern States. He understood the questions of how Senators are elected by Representatives. At that time, there was no direct election of United States Senators, which laid the foundation for the Lincoln-Douglass debate as they traveled across the State of Illinois trying to elect a very different State House that might elect Abraham Lincoln to the United States Senate.
He understood this question of the electoral college and how weighted votes could ultimately determine the President of the United States, not by direct election or by popular vote.
He had to have thought about all men being created equal when he looked at the Constitution and its ratification in 1788 and the amendments to the Constitution in 1791, known as the Bill of Rights, and to watch the advocates of States' rights argue for a 10th amendment to the Constitution creating dual federalism. Two systems. One system where the Constitution spoke specifically to powers relegated to the Federal Government. And those powers not relegated to the Federal Government would somehow remain in the purview of the States.
President Abraham Lincoln recognized that this amendment, this question of the 10th amendment, had a lot of moral ambiguity, because if the Constitution of the United States is silent on a question, it allows the States themselves to assume responsibility for the questions not raised in the United States Constitution, including moral questions.
While Abraham Lincoln may have never talked about it, he had to recognize that the 10th amendment to the Constitution, however appropriate--I am not anti States' rights. It has its appropriate place in American life. But Abraham Lincoln had to know that on the question of human rights, States' rights presented a profound problem. A dual system.
If all men are created equal in our Declaration of Independence, then States cannot treat women differently. If all men are created equal, then some States can't have an institution, peculiar institution of slavery, while other States do not allow slavery. In contemporary times, some States cannot be advancing health care for all children and some States have no children's health care program at all. Separate and unequal.
Some States can't be spending more per capita on public education for America's children while other States either can or don't, or don't have the wherewithal or don't have the political wherewithal to advance a higher quality education or an equal high-quality education for all Americans. Lincoln understood that the advocates of the 10th amendment presented a profound problem for the future of America.
Lincoln, in 1865, looking back on his life, looking back on American history, understood the Nation's oldest political party was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792. The Democratic party. Abraham Lincoln understood that Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, was one of the Nation's great advocates for local control and States' rights, who happened to also own slaves.
Abraham Lincoln understood that that generation of Americans saw themselves identified with their States first and not as Americans. I'm the gentleman from Virginia; I'm the gentleman from Illinois; I'm the gentleman from Georgia; I'm the gentleman or the gentlelady from. They saw themselves identified with their States first and not with our flag.
The primary party that made the arguments for local control and States' rights, the primary defender of the peculiar institution of slavery, the Democratic Party. Between 1794 and 1823, the Federalist Party came into existence. And, during that period, the Missouri Compromise.
Abraham Lincoln saw the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between pro-slavery and antislavery factions in the United States Congress. Statuary Hall is where this debate took place involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 3630, except within the boundaries of the proposed State of Missouri.
Prior to the agreement, the U.S. House of Representatives had refused to except the compromise, and a conference committee was appointed. The United States Senate refused to concur in the amendment, and the whole
measure was lost. These disputes involved the competition between southern and northern States for power in Congress and for control over the future territories.
There were also different factions emerging as the Democratic- Republican Party began to lose its coherence. In a letter, April 21, to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson wrote that, ``The division of the country created by the compromise line would eventually lead to the destruction of the Union.'' This is April 21, 1820.
And I quote, ``But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence, a geographical line coinciding with the marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark deeper and deeper.''
The Missouri compromise between northern and southern Congressmen. Abraham Lincoln in 1865 had to have understood the consequences of Jefferson's thinking in that compromise.
In 1834, another party comes into existence. The Whig Party. And though the Federalist Party has now expired, we are now left with Democratic Party and Whig Party between 1834 and 1856. The most notable pieces of legislation that advanced through this body were the California Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The California Act. The Compromise of 1850, which Abraham Lincoln had to have understood, was a series of bills from Congress aimed at resolving the territorial and slavery controversies arising out of the Mexican-American War. There were five of these such laws.
California was admitted as a free State. Texas received compensation for relinquishing claims to land west of the Rio Grande, what is now New Mexico. The territory of New Mexico, Arizona, and portions of southern Nevada was organized without any specific prohibition of slavery. The slave trade, but not slavery itself, was terminated in the District of Columbia, and the stringent fugitive slave laws were passed, requiring all citizens to assist in the return of a runaway slave, regardless of the legality of slavery in the specific States.
I want to talk about that for a moment, the fugitive slave laws. Not really to make anyone feel bad about this very unique and special moment in American history, Mr. Speaker, but to show you us how the government functioned during this period.
Here we had a government, a central government, that was unwilling to end the peculiar institution of slavery, relegating through most of its arguments the power over slavery to the States. But, if one slave escaped from slavery, the Congress of the United States would pass a law allowing anyone in the country to return that slave back to the State from which it escaped.
Now this is an amazing expansion of Federal power over the lives of one individual. Imagine that. A Federal Government with the power, when someone escapes from slavery to freedom, to pass a law to take that one person who made it to Massachusetts, the one person who made it to freedom, the one person who got out of slavery by his own admonition and his own efforts, the Federal Government hunted him down and sent him back to slavery.
Now that's an amazing amount of Federal power over the life of one individual. I'd like to put the reverse on that. I'd like to imagine a little differently. I'd like to see the Federal Government having the power to go into a community on the south side of Chicago and give one person health care. And I don't want to hear from the other side or even from some Democrats that there's never been a moment in the Federal Government's history where it's not been able to have the power over a single individual. That's just not true. It hauled a slave to slavery. Now why can't it provide, in a positive sense, health care for someone who doesn't have insurance? Why someone is going to tell me that's not a Federal responsibility, it's not a State responsibility, it's a private sector responsibility. That's old, tired argument. At one moment in American history, the Federal Government had the power over one individual's life who escaped to freedom. Now why can't the Federal Government have the power to find one person in a coal mine in West Virginia and give them a better job?
And who are we to be making the argument that we can't imagine a Federal Government that doesn't have that? That's just too much power. Too much power to give a man a job? To provide a higher quality of life for an American from a government of, for, and by the people?
Well, there has been a moment in American history where the Federal Government had the power to do something similar but, however, in a negative way. Rather than helping someone get to freedom, it returned someone back to slavery.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Abraham Lincoln had to have seen it. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries.
Now, how about this? The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Talking about moral leadership. Look at what Congress did. We passed legislation that said, We don't want to deal with it here in Washington any more. We're going to turn this fight over to the people. You determine for yourself how you're going to handle the moral issues of our day. We're not going to show any national leadership. When we create these States, we're going to create a movement, the Ruffians and everyone else who can run to the west. If you get to the State before someone else, you can set up a free State or you can set up a slave State. What kind of leadership is that?
Well, that actually happened. And Abraham Lincoln saw it.
Abraham Lincoln saw the Dred Scott decision. That decision, Dred Scott versus Sanford, by the United States Supreme Court, that rules that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States.
It also held that slavery, which had been illegal in some States, was now legal everywhere. Justice Taney, in this building, in this building where the Old Supreme Court Chambers are still preserved, ruled in this building that slavery was legal everywhere.
Lincoln, even while constructing the Capitol during the Civil War, fully understood that Members of Congress knew the Dred Scott decision about the same time the Dred Scott decision was being made because Justice Taney worked in the building.
And that Congress, specifically in the Dred Scott decision, had acted beyond the boundaries of the Constitution. That is, if the Congress of the United States--and this is important for contemporary times--seeks to provide health care for all Americans, or it seeks to expand its authority in these difficult economic times, Justice Tawney at that time could have easily argued that Congress is acting beyond the boundaries of the Constitution.
Of course, we have gone through several and subsequent amendments to the Constitution that have expanded Congress's role in these affairs.
Interestingly enough, I want to say something kind about Justice Taney. Justice Taney was a nationalist who rendered decisions that expanded our Nation's railroads. He rendered decisions that helped establish a single currency as opposed to the bartering system of just trading wears, but the establishment of a national infrastructure.
Justice Taney, actually, one of our court's most profound jurists towards the idea of building a more perfect union for all Americans, until it came to the decisions of race. And, on decisions of race, Justice Taney was a product of his time. The Dred Scott decision remains one of the most infamous and dreaded decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court.
Lincoln, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates--remember, we're not discussing 1860, we're not discussing 1861. In 1858, Lincoln had heard all of these arguments and he had watched Senator Stephen Douglas play a role in the Kansas-
Nebraska debate. He had watched these guys play roles in California. And he is questioning what it is about Members of Congress in these discussions that would lead to the suggestion that Congress did not have a role and that the Federal Government did not have a role in stopping the expansion of slavery into the western States.
Lincoln would obviously not be elected to the United States Senate. But in 1854, before the Lincoln-Douglas debates by about 4 years, a little known party would come into existence, a little known antislavery party called the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin. By 1860, Abraham Lincoln would be elected the Nation's first Republican President. Before he can even be sworn in as President of the United States, southern States would begin leaving the union because he would be perceived as an antislavery candidate who ran on an antislavery ticket who was committed to the idea that all men are created equal.
And so, Mr. Speaker, this is what Lincoln saw. Between 1860 when he was elected President and 1865, we could go through the details of the American Civil War, but I purge the timeline to make this point. Abraham Lincoln sustains important forces in our Nation's public life to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to an end. And then he ran for President. And he won. And because he won, States who believed in the 10th amendment and the rights of States to make judgments about their internal affairs would leave the union, and then he would press the question, provoking the South to secede by refusing to compromise on the expansion of slavery and filling Congress with even more pro-slavery Congressmen. And because the South knew that Abraham Lincoln was expanding States into the western territories, he just didn't want them to be pro- slavery States, that eventually, through his gradual approach, more Members of Congress would come here and Members of Congress who had been brought into the union, one free and one slave, would now confront a majority in Congress of people who understood the immoral nature of the peculiar institution. So this question of States rights has dominated our Nation's history until Abraham Lincoln gave us a sense of national union.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?
I thank the Speaker.
Toward that national union, around July 4, 1863, a couple of extraordinary events converge at a battlefield not far from here in Gettysburg and in Vicksburg in the South. Tens of thousands of Americans, both North and South, have lost their lives. And yet Abraham Lincoln understood that while some States were in the union because they believed in union, other States remained border States but believed in union and fundamentally believed that the southern States, our countrymen, did not have the right to secede from the union, he offered a redemptive tone to redefine our national existence. Look at what Abraham Lincoln says on November 19, 1863, in a eulogy in a battlefield not far from here, with the dead still unburied, with thousands of men still unburied and with the stench having been smelled for miles from that battlefield and that battle on July 4. He says:
``Four score and seven years ago--at that eulogy--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 the 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 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 we are highly resolved 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 and for the people shall not perish from the earth.''
Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg eulogy, better known as the Gettysburg Address, in 3\1/2\ minutes. He redefined July 4. Watch this, Mr. Speaker. On July 4, 1776, African Americans found themselves in a position of chattel slavery. And women could not vote.
On July 4, 1854, I believe it was, Frederick Douglass delivered an oration talking about how hypocritical the nation's independence celebration was given that African Americans found themselves in a position of chattel slavery.
By July 4, 1863, Abraham Lincoln is saying that the men who died in this battlefield have paid a price higher than any of us can ever add or detract, but the future belongs to us.
By July 4, 2007, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were locked in an unprecedented campaign for President of the United States, a beneficiary of the events on July 4, 1863.
By July 4, 2008, Barack Obama would be the presumptive Democratic nominee of the Democratic Party, the very party that was responsible for States rights and localism and denying people of color their basic freedoms, including the right to vote.
And by July 4, 2009, he's the 44th President of the United States.
Here's what Abraham Lincoln saw. He saw all the other July 4ths, all those Americans who were stuck in time and could not move on. That's part of what Lincoln saw. And so in the Gettysburg Address, he decided to give all of us a brand new July 4.
And so July 4, 2007, we saw Hillary and Barack running.
And July 4, 2008, we saw President Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.
And by July 4, 2009, he's the 44th President of the United States.
And by July 4, some date in the future, your child will be President or could be President of the United States.
And by July 4, some distant future date, all Americans could have health care.
And by July 4, some distant future date, all Americans could have decent, safe and affordable housing.
And by July 4, we're not just known by our States, but we will be known as Americans.
That's what makes Abraham Lincoln the greatest American. That's why we commemorate his 200th birthday, because the gift that Abraham Lincoln gave us, he keeps giving us. It just never goes away. That the America that we once were is not the America that we are. And it's certainly not the America that we will be. Oh, yes, there are some efforts at regression. As President Obama says, some of the old, tired arguments that we've heard over and over and over again. Some of the old adherents to dogma. Some of us don't even know why we're Republicans. Some of us don't even know why we're Democrats. We're just out of habit up here speaking and doing things. Some of us. Others of us are clear on the history and clear on the ideologies--in both parties. And yet there is a part of us, Mr. Speaker, that wants to build a more perfect union for all Americans, to move beyond the past, to forge a new future, where we turn to each other and not on each other, and bring about change for everybody. That somehow we rise together and we fall together, that who cares what color the hand is that reaches into the hole to pull you out of the hole that you find yourself in, as long as someone extends a hand.
This, I believe, Mr. Speaker, is the spirit of our 16th President. It makes him the greatest American, as he sits at one end of the national mall recessed into a temple, forever enshrined in the Nation's memory, as someone who loved his country so much that he would carefully use the power of the Commander in Chief, the great powers of his office, to bring wayward States back into the union and at the conclusion of the war to treat his countrymen
as countrymen again. Sure, from the perspective of African Americans and as an African American, I have a lot of misgivings about how national reconciliation during that period was handled. If the northerners fought the war to save the union, they never had to acknowledge the underlying moral cause of the war--slavery. So it's not about freeing African Americans. And many northerners fought the war to save the union, not to free the slaves. Southerners, many of them argue they weren't fighting to preserve the institution of slavery, they were protecting their way of life down here, that big government doesn't have a right to come down here and tell us what to do, a very different principle. And so at the end of the war, the northerners can forgive the southerners because, well, we've settled it on a battlefield. Except the central issue for which the war is fought, the issue of slavery from a northern perspective and the issue of slavery from the southern perspective, the people for whom the war is being fought over are never brought into the reconciliation: When are we going to get the right to vote? When are we going to get housing? When are we going to get equality? When are we going to help the nation live up to the true meaning of its creed? And that process would begin immediately after the Civil War during reconstruction--I wish the House of Representatives would let me line up the rest of my charts--through reconstruction and then through Jim Crow and the struggle by the NAACP which the House of Representatives passed legislation commemorating the 100 years of their existence because many of the promises of reconstruction had never come to fruition for all Americans and women were still struggling for equality in our country beyond the war. But it was Abraham Lincoln who ordained the human rights movements that would allow us to come to Washington, Mr. Speaker, and begin to argue our case that this nation must live up to the truest and the highest means by which it was founded.
And so there sits Abraham Lincoln, and just a few steps down from Abraham Lincoln would stand Martin Luther King in August of 1963.
``Today we stand in the shadow of a man who, 100 years ago, set the slaves free,'' that 100 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., would say, 100 years later, that is 1963, we would still find ourselves trapped in segregation with Governors using words like ``interposition'' and ``nullification,'' that if Congress passes a law to extend people's civil rights or if the Supreme Court would render a decision that might expand people's human rights in 1963, it is hard to imagine that we still had Governors using words like ``interposition'' and ``nullification'' meaning that their State had the right to ignore a decision of Congress or a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. Because in 1963, some of our leadership was showing more adherence to their State than they were to that Union, to that Flag, to that one country for which those men in a battlefield in Gettysburg had already paid the price for us not to have to revisit again. We already paid the price that we are going to be one Nation, not multiple nations, not 50 different States, all separate and all unequal.
Oh, the problems for President Obama are even more complex today. Because our system is still separate and unequal. Yes, we have a Federal system. And yes, we have respect for our State system. Some States are in surplus. Some are in deficit spending. Most are in deficit spending. And in deficit spending, it is very difficult to provide a high quality education for every single child in every single county. Even before the economy was in the condition that it was in, we had problems. And the problems now are only more exacerbated by the fact, any adherence to dogma that doesn't allow the Federal Government and the States to work cooperatively to bring relief to the American people should be seen as problematic by any side of the aisle. Why are we adhering to old dogma about what the States can do and about what the Federal Government isn't supposed to do? The American people at this hour are asking of us to do something for them. But the fact that President Barack Obama can even say that our problems today are small by comparison to the problems that Mr. Lincoln confronted is a statement about the magnitude of the problems that Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President, confronted.
And so, Mr. Speaker, even as we come to the floor and I stand here as the 91st African American to ever have the privilege of serving in a Congress where more than 12,000 people have served, and I'm just the 91st, I owe my service in the Congress to the unsung heroes, to the men and women, the sheroes and the heroes, who fought to advance the idea that all men are created equal, to Medgar Evers and Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, two Jews and a black, to Viola Liuzzo, to those martyrs, to those champions of equality and equal rights. But all of us owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the 16th President who allowed our generation and those succeeding generations to fight for what is right, to have the right to agree to agree and agree to disagree in the context of our magnificent Republic. And so, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, on the 200th anniversary of the greatest American who ever lived, and on behalf of the American people, we say thank you. And we say happy birthday.
I yield back the balance of my time.