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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the 150th anniversary of the second inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln. Later on this evening there will be an observance in the Rotunda sponsored by the Illinois State Society and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation to observe this anniversary. My colleague Senator Kirk is scheduled to be there; former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; Stephen Lang; and some of the most distinguished Lincoln scholars in America: Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Chief Justice Frank Williams of Rhode Island, and the most prolific Lincoln writer I know, Harold Holzer from New York.
There have been 15,000 books written about Abraham Lincoln. I think Mr. Holzer has written about half of them. He is not only prolific, but he is profound in his observations about this great man's life. He was joined by Edith Holzer, his wife, who stood by him through his Lincoln travails.
Historians disagree on whether the second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln was his greatest speech or his second greatest. I am in the latter camp. I accord that highest honor to the Gettysburg Address for its brevity as well as its inspiration, but both speeches are immortal.
I am not a Lincoln scholar, but my life as a Springfield attorney, elected Congressman, and Senator from Illinois has taken me to some of the same streets and same buildings that were part of Abraham Lincoln's life.
Although he tried mightily to be elected to the Senate in 1858, Abraham Lincoln fell short. It was in that campaign of 1858 that he debated Stephen Douglas. At the end of the debates and when the votes were cast, Stephen Douglas was the victor in that senatorial contest in Illinois. Of course, the same two men faced off again 2 years later for the Presidency. But that Senate seat, the Douglas seat that was contested in the 1858 election, is the same seat I am honored to hold today in the State of Illinois.
We can feel Abraham Lincoln's presence in this building, particularly near the Senate Chamber. There is a magnificent room off the Senate Chamber known as the President's Room. It is one of the historic rooms in the Capitol.
It was in this room in April of 1862 that President Lincoln signed the bill outlawing slavery in the District of Columbia. It was in this room in 1965 that Dr. Martin Luther King and other leaders watched Lyndon Baines Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination at the polls--100 years after Lincoln's death. It was in the same room on January 20, 2009, that a newly inaugurated President Barack Obama signed his first official documents as President of the United States. And it was in this room that Abraham Lincoln worked long into the night before his second inauguration, signing and vetoing bills passed in the final hours of one Congress, before the next Congress was sworn in. Imagine that, Congress leaving important business until the last minute.
President Lincoln was working in the President's Room on March 3, 1865, when he received an urgent message from GEN Ulysses Grant. GEN Robert E. Lee was seeking a peace conference to negotiate an end to the war. Grant asked the President, his Commander in Chief: What should I reply?
After conferring with Secretary of War Stanton and Secretary of State Seward, Lincoln sent word back to General Grant that he was not to meet with Lee ``unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee's army.''
The following day, in his second inaugural address, March 4, 1865, Lincoln explained more fully why he had refused Lee's request for a negotiated settlement. He said: ``With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.''
Less than 5 weeks later, General Lee surrendered unconditionally at Appomattox. The cannons would fall silent. After 4 years of horrific death and destruction, the worst war and the most costly war in the history of the United States was over. But the work was not.
President Lincoln told us in his second inaugural address the urgent challenge is not only to win the war, but to win the peace by achieving true reconciliation. Another President could certainly have been vindictive toward the South--that had been the practice of the day and it is what many people wanted in the North--but Lincoln understood that if America remained divided after the hostilities ceased, then the terrible sacrifices of war would have been in vain. So he counseled in that immortal inaugural address: ``With malice toward none, charity for all.'' Let us bind up the wounds here, and not inflict new injuries. That was how the Union would be reunited and persevere.
Six weeks later after this speech, Abraham Lincoln was cut down by an assassin's bullet. He was, in fact, the last casualty of America's war within its own boundaries.
That address, that second inaugural address, remains the second shortest in the Nation's history, only 703 words. Lincoln spoke so briefly that many people were still arriving after he finished. As at Gettysburg, some listeners were mystified by the President's brevity. Few understood the genius of the speech at that moment. Frederick Douglass was an exception. He said to Mr. Lincoln afterwards, ``Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.''
In the century and a half since his death, we have made uneven progress in achieving the kind of America Abraham Lincoln believed we could be. A full century passed before African Americans in the South were guaranteed the most basic right of citizenship, the right to vote.
If President Lincoln were here today, I think he would be happy to see how our Union has survived. I think he would be pleased and astonished to see that America had elected and reelected another lanky lawyer from Illinois, and an African American, to be our President.
I also think he would challenge us. When our government ``of the people, by the people, for the people'' is under threat from a cabal of secret, special interest money that can buy elections, I think President Lincoln would tell us we have unfinished work to do.
When we neglect to bind up the wounds of war of even one soldier returning from war, and neglect to care for widows and orphans, Lincoln would have reminded us that we have unfinished work to do.
And when the right to vote is under systematic attack in so many States for obvious political reasons, there is still work to do.
When Americans who work long and hard can't earn enough to provide for their families, I think Lincoln would tell us to put our shoulder to the plough and finish the work of creating a genuine opportunity for all Americans.
We can see in the second inaugural and in the Gettysburg Address one reason that Abraham Lincoln remains our greatest President. He shows us that America is capable of constant progress toward our professed creed. We can love our country and be determined to make it better.
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