{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/the-sesquicentennial-of-the-gettysburg-address", "The Sesquicentennial Of The Gettysburg Address", "2013-11-19", "2013", "2013-11", "Democrat", "House", "MD", "Benjamin Cardin", "C000141", "www.cardin.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "November 19, 2013\n\t\t\t The Sesquicentennial Of The Gettysburg Address \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t \n\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n        \n\t\t\t\t Statement Of The Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md)\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n Mr. CARDIN.\u00a0 Mr. President, 150 years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln gave one of the greatest speeches not just in U.S. history, but in human history.\u00a0 In under three minutes and using just 10 sentences, President Lincoln spanned the past, present, and future of the American experiment and spoke to the aspirations, rights, and responsibilities not just of Americans, but of humankind.\r\n\u00a0\r\nIt\u2019s astounding for us to realize that President Lincoln was invited to the dedication of the Nation\u2019s first national military cemetery almost as an afterthought.\u00a0 The event was organized around the schedule of former Harvard president Edward Everett, who was thought to be one of the Nation\u2019s greatest orators of the time.\u00a0 Everett was the featured speaker and, in the custom of that era, addressed the crowd for over two hours.\u00a0 President Lincoln, who had been invited to say \u201ca few appropriate words,\u201d followed Everett.\r\n\u00a0\r\nPresident Lincoln wrote for the ear; he recited words and phrases as he committed them to paper.\u00a0 When he gave speeches, he spoke deliberately.\u00a0 His great speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, were as much theological in nature as they were political arguments.\r\n\u00a0\r\nFour 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.\r\nPresident Lincoln borrowed a method of referring to time from the Psalms of the King James Bible (Psalm 90:10).\u00a0 It seems idiosyncratic to our ears today, but his listeners would have immediately grasped that he was going back not to 1789, when the first Congress convened in New York City and George Washington was inaugurated as our Nation\u2019s first president.\u00a0 He was not going back to 1788 when the Constitution was ratified, or back to 1787 when the Constitutional Convention met.\u00a0 He was going back 87 years, to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, citing the proclamation of our Founding Fathers \u2013 who were from the North and South alike \u2013 of the universal truth \u201cthat all men are created equal\u201d.\r\n\u00a0\r\nIn the very next sentence, President Lincoln pivoted to the present and proceeded to explain the purpose of the Civil War: to determine whether the United States of America or any other nation \u201cconceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal\u201d could succeed and last:\r\n\u00a0\r\nNow we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.\u00a0 We are met on a great battlefield of that war.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.\r\n\u00a0\r\nAnd then President Lincoln, with characteristic humility, paid homage to those who had fought and died at Gettysburg before pivoting again, to the future, and to laying out the responsibilities of his and future generations of Americans:\r\n\u00a0\r\nBut, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.\u00a0 The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.\u00a0 The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us \u2013 that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion \u2013 that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain \u2013 that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom \u2013 and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.\r\n\u00a0\r\nAs historian Ronald C. White, Jr., has written, \u201cLincoln was finished.\u00a0 He had not spoken the word \u2018I\u2019 even once.\u00a0 It was as if Lincoln disappeared so Americans could focus unhindered upon his transcendent truths.\u201d\u00a0 Those \u201ctranscendent truths\u201d are apparent to us today but things weren\u2019t so clear 150 years ago, in the midst of the horrific brutality and death of the Civil War.\u00a0 On November 20, 1863, the New York Times reported that President Lincoln\u2019s address was interrupted by applause five times and followed by sustained applause but historian Shelby Foote said that the reaction to the speech was delayed and \u201cbarely polite\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 On November 23, 1863, the Chicago Times \u2013 an anti-Lincoln paper \u2013 editorialized that President Lincoln\u2019s address \u201cwas an offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity\u201d and \u201ca perversion of history so flagrant that the most extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.\u201d\r\n\u00a0\r\nInitially, President Lincoln believed that the Civil War was being fought simply to preserve the Union.\u00a0 But his thinking evolved to the point where the war was about the abolition of slavery.\u00a0 It became the testing ground of whether the United States of America \u2013 or any other nation dedicated to human liberty and equality \u2013 could endure.\r\n\u00a0\r\nThere is a popular legend that President Lincoln jotted down a few notes on his way to Gettysburg, or that he spoke extemporaneously.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t true.\u00a0 He prepared the speech beforehand and there was one improvisation only: he added the words \u201cunder God\u201d.\u00a0 As White noted, \u201c\u2018Under God\u2019 pointed backward and forward: back to \u2018this nation,\u2019 which drew its breath from both political and religious sources, but also forward to a \u2018new birth.\u2019\u00a0 Lincoln had come to see the Civil War as a ritual of purification.\u00a0 The old Union had to die. . . Death became a transition to a new Union and a new humanity.\u201d\r\n\u00a0\r\nAnd so President Lincoln \u2013 in theological as well as constitutional language \u2013 laid out for his listeners, for us, and for our grandchildren \u201cthe unfinished work\u201d and \u201cthe great task remaining\u201d: namely, to promote \u201ca new birth of freedom\u201d.\u00a0 As the American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, \u201cThere are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream.\u00a0 They are right.\u00a0 It is the American dream.\u201d\u00a0 We Americans are singularly fortunate and privileged to hail from the first nation in history \u201cconceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal\u201d.\u00a0 It is our solemn responsibility not only to protect and expand freedom here, but to promote and nurture it abroad so that \u201cgovernment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.\u201d\r\n# # #", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/the-sesquicentennial-of-the-gettysburg-address"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0652889031916857, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}