Bicentennial of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln (1809-2009)
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"A New Birth of Freedom" by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Read what USU's President Chase said on the centennial of the Gettysburg Address.
See facts about Abraham Lincoln in Utah
"A New Birth of Freedom"
Abraham Lincoln's Bicentennial, 1809-2009.
This magazine contains several articles on Lincoln and governors' messages from 49 states (and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich).
Michael W. Homer, Chair, Board of State History, is Utah's representative on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Our Research Center has a limited number of copies, free
while supplies last.
"What Did Lincoln Say at Gettysburg?"
100 years to the day after Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863), Dr. Daryl Chase, president of Utah State University, gave a speech titled, “What Did Lincoln Say at Gettysburg?”
Here are some excerpts. (You can read the entire speech in Pamphlet 6358 at the Research Center.)
Liberty
First, and perhaps most important of all, he reminded his vast audience assembled on the blood-soaked battlefield that this nation was ‘conceived in liberty.’
Equality
Americans can never forget that he quoted five fateful words which originally had been written 87 years previously by Thomas Jefferson, the aristocratic slave-holding Virginia planter, who became the third President of the United States. Those fateful words were: ‘All men are created equal.’ These words…have been difficult words for all succeeding generations of Americans to live with. But we cannot erase them from the Declaration of Independence, nor from the Gettysburg Address, nor from our national conscience.
These five words…are difficult and at times impossible for imperfect mortals to live with, as we compete with our fellowmen for our daily bread while shackled to inherited prejudices. And so, we are tempted to forget them or explain them away. But the underprivileged, the weak, and the disinherited will not let those words be forgotten…. [They] keep reminding us that at Gettysburg Lincoln said that ‘this nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’
Testing
He said that the great war…was testing whether this nation or any nation that had been conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could long endure.
Unfinished work
He also referred to the ‘unfinished work’ of the heroic dead to which the living must dedicated and consecrate their lives in governments of by and for the people are not to perish from the earth….
What constitutes the ‘unfinished work’ of our lifetime? Many Americans would include the following:
On the Domestic Scene:
- Eradication of unemployment
- Conquest of ignorance, fanaticism, poverty, and disease
- Provision of educational opportunities for all who can profit by them and educational programs adapted to need.
- Adequate care for the abandoned, the sick, the aged, and the mentally defective.
- Eradication of all known highway and industrial hazards.
- Protection of food, water and air from health-destroying elements.
- Stimulation of initiative and self-reliance among all citizens.
- Guarantee to all responsible Americans the right to vote, speak, write, travel, work, and engage in commercial intercourse…without fear of bodily harm or mental suffering.
On the International scene:
- Support of all organizations, institutions and movements which strengthen the cause of peace and international understanding.
- Assistance of underdeveloped nations in improving their economies and political institutions….
- Promotion among the rising generation the ideal of human brotherhood….
I think it is in harmony with the spirit of Lincoln to say that in our republic our unfinished work will remain unfinished until there is ‘liberty and justice for all.’
Facts about Abraham Lincoln in Utah
Signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the Pacific Railway act authorized the construction of the transcontinental railroad, which was completed in Utah Territory, and is commemorated on the Utah State Quarter.
- In 1862 Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, and the Pacific Railway Act. The Homestead Act encouraged immigration into the territory and facilitated settlement. The Morrill Act was the first anti-bigamy legislation which was passed by the United States Congress. The Pacific Railway Act authorized the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in Utah Territory, and which is commemorated on the Utah State Quarter.
- Brigham Young, the first Governor of Utah Territory, commented on Lincoln’s political capital: “It is like a rope of sand, or like a rope made of water. He is as weak as water. What can he do? Very little.” But he later acknowledged: “I always had a liking for Abe Lincoln, and if he had come out here and known us, he would have understood us and liked us.”
- In June 1863, T. B. H. Stenhouse, a Mormon representative in Washington, met with Lincoln and reported that Lincoln had said, “…when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farm which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It as too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone.”
- In March 1865 Utah residents from diverse backgrounds—Mormons, soldiers and non-Mormon businessmen—joined together in celebration of Lincoln’s second inauguration. A month later, they came together once again, this time in a solemn memorial service in honor of the assassinated President.
- Historian George U. Hubbard has offered the following assessment of Lincoln’s relationship with the early settlers of Utah: “In spite of the fact that most of Lincoln’s time and energies were devoted to the problems of slavery and the Civil War during his tenure as President, he nevertheless took time to hear and to act in behalf of the problems of the Latter-day Saints. The number of instances of his dealings with these people were necessarily few, but they were of such a nature that he was to become loved and honored by the Latter-day Saints; and his memory is revered by them still….”
Events in Utah
57th Annual Utah State History Conference, September 2009. Sessions concerning Lincoln and Utah.
Center for Study on New Religion (CESNUR), Salt Lake City on July 10-14, 2009. Sessions concerning Lincoln and Utah.