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Senator Reilly Offers Lincoln Day Address

from the Maryland Senate Republican Slate

On Monday, February 14, Senator Reilly delivered the annual Lincoln Day speech. The Senator's speech offered an inspiring reflection upon the trials and tribulations of the Lincoln Presidency and noted how that sometimes when the night seems darkest the dawn is close at hand.

Lincoln Day Speech

Presented to Maryland State Senate on Monday, February 14, 2011 by Senator Edward Reilly

Mr. President,   My fellow Senators,   My lovely wife Cathy,   Ladies and Gentleman

I am honored to be asked to share with you tonight some of my thoughts, and those of my staff, concerning a historical Icon, a political leader, and a true patriot of our country, Abraham Lincoln.

I would like to focus on a familiar and powerful speech, the Gettysburg address. 

Lincoln and this speech has been anaylsised, reviewed, praised, critized, and memorized since 1863.   I hope to do it honor this evening with a reading and reflection.   

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 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 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.

When Abraham Lincoln wrote this speech on November 19, 1863, while reportedly traveling on a train from Washington DC through Maryland, bound for the battlefield of Gettysburg, he was deep in the struggle of a war that was not going very well for him or the Union.  He was about to dedicate a battlefield where an estimated 7,000 American men and boys had just perished.   His one goal through his entire Presidency was to preserve the Union at all costs.  In his speech, which was given on a small section of land off to the side of the great battlefield where the battle had raged for 3 days and nights, he took no credit for the North's victory.    Instead, he remembered our nation and the men who gave their lives that the nation might live.

Opening the speech with the phrase "Four score and seven years ago" the people listening to President Lincoln on that Gettysburg battlefield instantly knew that he was referring to the men of the Second Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.  When these patriot men signed their names to this document they signed away their livelihoods, their freedoms and their lives.  They gave up all that they cherished on an experiment of democracy for a new union of States.

Lincoln carried the weight of the dissolved union throughout his presidency, as he carried the weight of an enslaved people within his country.  He did believe, as Thomas Jefferson had written, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  This was a concept that was written into our Declaration of Independence but sadly disregarded when the Constitution was ratified in 1787.

Nine months before the speech at Gettysburg on Jan 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in states that were in rebellion of the United States were free.   This was a bold move by a President, Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.  This wasn't an act of Congress.   This was an act of just one man who saw the Emancipation of the slave population as a way to suppress the war.   The Act of Congress, with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery, would come on December 6, 1865.  This was 8 months after the assassination of President Lincoln.  In death Lincoln fulfilled the words that Jefferson had written in his Declaration of Independence.

As important as the Emancipation Proclamation is to our Country's history, Lincoln never lost sight that the Union must be preserved.   This was the predominate theme throughout Lincoln's presidency.  

The Battle of Gettysburg proved to be the turning point of the Civil War, but Lincoln had no way of knowing this on that cold November day in 1863.   His staunch stand that the Union of the United States be preserved echoed in this closing sentence of this speech.  Abraham Lincoln did preserved the Union that Thomas Jefferson and the other 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence agreed to "mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."   Like the men who died on the battlefield of Gettysburg in order to preserve the union, Lincoln also gave the ultimate sacrifice to our Country so that it may remain a Union.  Lincoln respectfully requested that that day "that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."    

We will continue to honor Abraham Lincoln on this day and in the future, and as Senators in this historic chamber, under the watchful eye of the four Maryland signers of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Chase, Charles Carroll of Carrolton, William Paca, and Thomas Stone, may we hold sacred our duty, may we uphold our State and continue to uphold the United States of America.  Thank you.

Montgomery County Republican Central Committee