On the 19th of November, 1863, President Lincoln delivered the following dedicatory address upon the occasion of consecrating a National Cemetery at Gettysburg, for the secure rest of those brave men who yielded up their lives in behalf of their country during the three days’ battle at that place:
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of 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 can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on. 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 the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
[CHAPTER XVII.]
THE THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS.
Organization of the House—Different Opinions as to Reconstruction—Provisions for Pardon of Rebels—President’s Proclamation of Pardon—Annual Message—Explanatory Proclamation.
Upon the assembling of the Thirty-eighth Congress, December 7th, 1863—that Congress, in the lower branch of which the Opposition had counted upon a majority—the supporters of the Government found no difficulty in electing their candidates for Speaker by a majority of twenty, nor a radical anti-slavery man as Chaplain, albeit against the latter was offered as candidate an Episcopalian Bishop, nameless here, who had had the effrontery since the outbreak of the war to appear before the public as a defender of the institution upon Christian principles.
With the success of our arms—movements toward an organization of the local governments in the States of Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas being in progress—the difficult question as to the principles upon which such reorganization should be effected presented itself for settlement.
Some took the ground that, by virtue of their rebellion, the disloyal States had lapsed into mere territorial organizations, and should remain in that condition until again admitted into the Union.
Others contended that this would be, in effect, to recognise secession, and maintained that, whatever might have been the acts of the inhabitants of any State, the State as such still constituted an integral member of the Union, entitled to all privileges as such, whenever a sufficient number of loyal citizens chose to exercise the right of suffrage—the General Government seeing to it, as was its duty under the Constitution, that a republican form was guarantied. As to what number of loyal inhabitants should suffice, opinions differed.