[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2097-2098]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         REDEDICATING OURSELVES TO OUR NATION'S UNFINISHED WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Quigley) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. QUIGLEY. Mr. Speaker, 7 score and 12 years ago, another gentleman 
from Illinois went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate the 4-
month-old, still unfinished Union cemetery at the site of one of the 
bloodiest battles in American history. There he would give one of our 
Nation's defining speeches. Amazingly, President Lincoln's address was 
not even the main event of that day. Edward Everett, the former 
president of Harvard, was the event's main speaker, spending 2 hours 
lecturing about ancient Greece and how that society honored their 
fallen soldiers.
  Everett later wrote:

       I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as 
     near to the central idea of the occasion in 2 hours as 
     President Lincoln did in 2 minutes.

  In the 2\1/2\ minutes Lincoln spoke, he did more than honor our 
fallen soldiers. In 272 eloquent words, he reminded us that we live in 
a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
He asked whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated can long endure.
  In his address, the President also issued a challenge to his 
contemporaries and to generations of Americans thereafter, saying:

       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.

  He concluded:

       Our Nation shall have a new birth of freedom and that a 
     government of the people, by the people, and for the people 
     shall not perish from this Earth.

  In his address, I believe, President Lincoln was asking the question: 
What do we as Americans mean when we say all of us ``are created 
equal''?

                              {time}  1015

  In the over 150 years since the Gettysburg Address, we have had our 
struggles, but we have also had our successes.
  We have suffered the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 
but we also experienced the redemption of Brown v. Board of Education. 
We allowed the women of this Nation to remain disenfranchised for more 
than a century, but we also passed the 19th Amendment, which affirmed 
women's right to vote.
  We lived through the travesties of Jim Crow, but we also celebrated 
the passage of the Civil Rights Act. We watched Truman's executive 
action desegregate our military. We passed Don't Ask, Don't Tell--and 
repealed it--and DOMA, but we also have witnessed the legalization of 
same-sex marriage in 37 States and the District of Columbia.
  All of these examples serve as reminders of the difficulties in 
ensuring equality for all, but they also demonstrate a nation that has 
responded to challenge and has been reborn. Each time, we have come a 
little closer to living up to the ideal that all of us are created 
equal.
  To paraphrase Dr. King, the moral arc of our Nation may be long, but 
as history shows us, it bends towards justice, equality, and freedom.
  In times of dissonance, inequality, and injustice, great leaders like 
Lincoln have reminded us of our Nation's true purpose: equality.
  On Lincoln's birthday, let's rededicate ourselves to our Nation's 
unfinished work. Let's ensure that women get equal pay for equal work. 
Let's recognize all love as equal and extend marriage rights to all of 
our citizens once and for all. Let's strengthen the Voting Rights Act 
to guarantee that no one is disenfranchised and all Americans have 
access to this fundamental right.
  Let's finish the work the Senate started and pass a comprehensive 
immigration reform bill. Let's pass the Employment Non-Discrimination 
Act so that no American can be fired simply because of who they love or 
who they are. Let's allow our neighbors and friends who put in a full 
day's work, whether in the mailroom or the boardroom, to provide their 
families with a living wage.
  Lincoln modestly believed that ``no one would long remember'' his 
address that day at Gettysburg, but we do remember and strive to honor 
all those who have sacrificed and struggled--and continue to struggle--
for equality because we believe, as Dr. King spoke of on the steps of 
Lincoln's own sacred memorial, ``that one day this Nation will rise up 
and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to

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be self-evident, that all men are created equal.''

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