HE ISOTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF 
 
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 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER
 
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 /«>yr^ a
 
 THE I5OTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN • 1809-I959
 
 I
 
 — IN THIS TEM'l^^E PEOPLE 
 
 THE HEARTS OF THE ^,ON 
 5 !N THE n^ caVED THt V^ ^lN 
 COR WHOM HE ^^„ xhaM LINCOL. 
 
 THE LINCOLN MEMORL\L IN WASHINGTON, D.C., SEEN ANNUALLY BY OVER 2,500,000 TOURISTS 
 
 FROM EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
 
 fUnSah 
 
 -J[ 86th congress, IST session . . HOUSE DOCUMENT NO. 211 |~ 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN COMMEMORATION CEREMONY 
 
 Report of the Joint Committee on Arrangements on the 
 Commemoration Ceremony in Observance of 
 
 The 150th Anniversary of the 
 
 Birth of Abraham Lincoln 
 
 1809-1959 
 
 At a Joint Session of Congress, February 12, ^QSQ 
 
 UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 WASHINGTON ; 1959
 
 Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 Commemoration Ceremony — Program back pocket 
 
 Public Law 85^75 xv 
 
 Congressional Record Report — February 12, 1959 i 
 
 History of the 1959 Joint Session Ceremony 9 
 
 Presidential Address — Sesquicentennial Dinner 
 
 February 11, 1959 13 
 
 Bishop Richard S. M. Emrich — Address 15 
 
 Sesquicentennial Dinner Program 21 
 
 Library of Congress — Opening of Lincoln Sesquicentennial 
 
 Exhibition 23 
 
 Television and Radio Coverage 25 
 
 Harold E. Fellow^s — Letter 27 
 
 Montage of Newspaper Coverage 29 
 
 Epilogue 31 
 
 [v]
 
 Letter of Transmittal 
 
 The Honorable Richard M. Nixon, 
 President of the Sena„e 
 
 The Konorable Sam Rayburn, 
 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives 
 
 Dear Mr. President and Mr. Speaker: 
 
 On behalf of the Joint Committee on Arrangements for the 
 
 Commemoration Ceremony before a Joint Session of the House and 
 
 Senate of the United States, February 12, 1959, marking the One 
 
 Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln, 
 
 I have the honor to present the follovs^ing Report. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 Fred Schwengel, Chairman 
 
 [vn]
 
 Calendar No. 2422 
 
 PROVIDING FOR A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS FOR 
 COMMEMORATING THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Mr. Hayden, from the Committee on Rules and Administration, 
 submitted the following 
 
 REPORT 
 
 [To accompany H.J. Res. 648] 
 
 The Committee on Rules and Administration, to whom was re- 
 ferred the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 648) providing for a joint 
 session of Congress for commemorating the 150th anniversary of 
 the birth of Abraham Lincoln, having considered the same, report 
 favorably thereon with an amendment and recommend that the joint 
 resolution, as amended, do pass. 
 
 This resolution would provide that the sesquicentennial of the birth 
 of Abraham Lincoln (Thursday, February 12, 1959) be commemo- 
 rated by a joint session of Congress, arrangements for which would 
 be undertaken by a committee on arrangements composed of 4 
 Members of the Senate appointed by the President of the Senate and 4 
 Members of the House of Representatives appointed by the Speaker 
 of the House. 
 
 The committee on arrangements would plan the proceedings, issue 
 invitations, and select a distinguished Lincoln scholar to deliver the 
 memorial address. 
 
 The amendment, occasioned by a clerical oversight, corrects the 
 list of dignitaries who would be invited to join in the commemoration. 
 
 C VIII ]
 
 House Concurrent Resolution No. 57 
 
 Resolved by the House of Representatives {the Senate concurring), 
 That in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
 of the birth of Abraham Lincoln the two Houses of Congress shall 
 assemble in the Hall of the House of Representatives at ii o'clock 
 antemeridian, on Thursday, February 12, 1959. 
 
 That the Committee on Arrangements, created pursuant to Public 
 Law 85-775, is empowered to make suitable arrangements for fitting 
 and proper exercises for the joint session of Congress hereby author- 
 ized and, in accordance with provisions of Public Law 85-775, to 
 issue appropriate invitations to officials, dignitaries, and other per- 
 sons to join in this commemoration. 
 
 Passed the House of Representatives January 27, 1959. 
 
 43592—59- 
 
 [ix]
 
 The Joint Committee on Arrangements 
 
 Fred Schwengel, Chairman 
 
 For the Senate 
 
 For the House 
 
 Paul H. Douglas 
 of Illinois 
 
 Peter F. Mack, Jr. 
 of Illinois 
 
 Everett M. Dirksen 
 of Illinois 
 
 WiNFiELD K. Denton 
 of Indiana 
 
 John Sherman Cooper 
 of Kentucl^y 
 
 Fred Schwengel 
 of Iowa 
 
 Vance Hartke 
 of Indiana 
 
 William G. Bray 
 of Indiana 
 
 [x]
 
 Introduction 
 
 THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS in the 
 House of Representatives that on Febru- 
 ary 12, 1959, celebrated the 150th anniversary 
 of the birth of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, left 
 an impact on the American mind without 
 precedent in the history of like ceremonies. 
 This is not the appraisal of this Committee 
 but rather the estimate of leaders in the field 
 of mass communication. The authority for 
 this estimate is the National Association of 
 Broadcasters. The estimate derives equally 
 decisive validity from an evaluation of the 
 monumental printed material — news stories, 
 editorials, commentaries, magazine articles, 
 cartoons, sketches and drawings — a minor 
 fraction of which from all over the United 
 States are reproduced fragmentarily on these 
 pages. This is a phenomenon that explains 
 also why this report derived additional im- 
 petus because of the continuing demand for 
 a permanent record of the proceedings. 
 
 Not all the commentary touch directly on 
 the ceremonies at the Joint Session. 
 
 But for the most part this was the center 
 and focus of the commemorative event. 
 The Joint Session gave it an official and 
 exalted position before the country and the 
 world that helps to explain the sweep and 
 scope of the interest in the occasion. From 
 the Joint Session more or less directly radi- 
 
 ated distinguished peripheral events. The 
 most significant of these was the National 
 Sesquicentennial Dinner in the Capital, on 
 the eve of the Joint Session, at which the 
 President spoke, and the formal opening of 
 the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Exhibition in 
 the Library of Congress. The Exhibition 
 opening was timed to follow immediately 
 after the Joint Session and with — for the most 
 part — the same dramatis personae that helped 
 make the House program so outstanding. 
 Presented by their host. Librarian of Con- 
 gress L. Quincy Mumford, the Speaker and 
 the Vice President addressed a notable com- 
 pany in the Great Hall of the Library, with 
 Carl Sandburg among the auditors. 
 
 The repercussions of the Lincoln anniver- 
 sary were to a remarkable degree interna- 
 tional. 
 
 England, for example, marked the event 
 with articles of eulogy and analysis on the 
 highest level of political sophistication and 
 in her most respected journals. There is an 
 abundance of evidence that the name Abra- 
 ham Lincoln has powerful and emotional 
 meaning in many of the great and the remot- 
 est corners of the earth. There is a Lincoln 
 Society in New Delhi, as President Eisen- 
 hower pointed out. Tokyo in the summer 
 of 1958 reported that high school students 
 
 [xi]
 
 ranked Lincoln "the most respected of all 
 world figures." The Lincoln name occurs 
 in the speeches and even the basic principles 
 of Government of China's late Sun Yat-sen 
 and in the thinking of India's Nehru. Tol- 
 stoy regarded Lincoln "the only giant" 
 among "all the great national statesmen of 
 history." 
 
 In all this the Soviet Union is a special case 
 for they, too, have a niche for Lincoln in their 
 hall of fame. Soviet periodicals on all levels 
 have again and again made much of the 
 Lincoln story. In fact the Soviet treatment 
 of Lincoln today is an object lesson in the 
 fantasy phase of Soviet propaganda tech- 
 niques. They eulogize Lincoln in their pe- 
 culiar fashion and come up with this from 
 Izvestia, February 12, 1959: 
 
 The Lincoln anniversary coincides with an im- 
 portant landmark in the history of the Soviet Union 
 and the United States — the 150th anniversary of the 
 establishment of Russian-American diplomatic re- 
 lations. This coincidence gives ample food for 
 thought. It would be well for the cause of peace 
 if those who are now determining United States 
 foreign policy were to follow the precepts of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 Again: 
 
 In the America of today the ideals of this great 
 forbear have been trampled upon and his precepts 
 fallen into oblivion. 
 
 In spite of this rather unique propaganda 
 treatment and the torturing of facts to match 
 bias and dogma, Izvestia, a newspaper of only 
 four pages overall, and a top organ of the 
 Soviet regime, nevertheless gives the Lincoln 
 anniversary a three-column spread, with a 
 portrait of Lincoln and fully a column and 
 three-quarters of text. 
 
 Even the journalistic morass in which 
 Izvestia beclouds the Lincoln anniversary 
 fails somehow to destroy the luster and the 
 basic image of Lincoln's greatness. Here is 
 a demonstration of truth so powerful, espe- 
 cially in relation to Lincoln, that partially at 
 least it prevails. So that in sum, even the 
 Izvestia treatment, for all its fanciful, self- 
 serving, Communist-twisted semantics, is in 
 some measure to the good. 
 
 Letters from the Washington diplomatic 
 corps to Chairman Schwengel and Wiley T. 
 Buchanan, Jr., Chief of Protocol of the De- 
 partment of State, printed elsewhere in this 
 Report, testify further to the international or- 
 bit of the Joint Session. 
 
 But the immediate influence on the emo- 
 tions and the thinking of tens of millions of 
 Americans made the Joint Session and the 
 event it commemorated without the shadow 
 of a doubt the most powerfully inspiring edu- 
 cational force in the annals of public cere- 
 monies for exercises of such comparative 
 brevity. It was brevity with profound depth 
 and meaning suggesting in themselves some- 
 thing of the tone and essence of the Gettys- 
 burg Address which, in fact, was an integral 
 and recreated part of the ceremony proper. 
 
 Its primary and its most compelling quality 
 was its dignity. 
 
 Beyond that came factors that go to the 
 heart of the American tradition and the re- 
 spect of civilized mankind for human great- 
 ness. These factors involve also American 
 technological competence and the sense of 
 public responsibility that motivates American 
 communication media. They emphasize the 
 sheer awe that inherently cloaks any event 
 that bears the imprimatur of both Houses of 
 
 [xii]
 
 the Congress of die United States and that 
 occurs formally under its role as the host to 
 the Supreme Court of the United States and 
 the Executive Branch of the Government. 
 
 Thus in introducing the Report of your 
 Joint Committee on Arrangements that for- 
 mulated the plan for this event it is perti- 
 nent to testify that the reasons behind its 
 immense success were these: 
 
 1. The warm, all-pervading glow of the 
 historical image of Abraham Lincoln on the 
 hearts and minds of the American people 
 and the people of the world. 
 
 2. The arresting respect that the Congress 
 elicits by any event that occurs under its 
 aegis in a joint session of the two Houses. 
 
 3. The intensely human personality and 
 noble aspect of Carl Sandburg, orator of the 
 day, and biographer of Lincoln. 
 
 4. The drama of the voice of Fredric 
 March, the distinguished actor, reading the 
 Gettysburg Address. 
 
 5. The precision and appropriateness of 
 each number in the program, tailored ex- 
 actly to the occasion and performed by: the 
 Speaker, Sam Rayburn, as presiding officer; 
 the Reverend Bernard Braskamp, D.D., of- 
 fering the invocation as the Chaplain of the 
 House ; the Reverend Frederick Brown Har- 
 ris, D.D., offering the benediction as the 
 Chaplain of the Senate; the prelude by the 
 United States Army Band Orchestra; the 
 songs by The Idlers, a choral group of ca- 
 dets from the United States Coast Guard 
 Academy. 
 
 6. The panoramic spectacle of so much 
 
 power, so much history, so much drama, and 
 so much of the American heritage concen- 
 trated within the area of the camera's lens, 
 radio, and the eyes and ears of the Nation's 
 press. 
 
 7. The instantaneity and the skill with 
 which television, radio, and the printed page 
 made this available to all the American 
 people and to many parts of the world. 
 
 Your Committee on Arrangements is 
 proud to have been the architect of this 
 ceremony. 
 
 Yet what this Report seeks most to do is 
 not to draw the curtain on the 150th Lincoln 
 anniversary as a sort of valedictory to a great 
 occasion, but to emphasize its belief that a 
 vast experiment in education for the total 
 population has been pioneered by this event. 
 Your Committee believes that the Joint Ses- 
 sion of Congress in the House of Represent- 
 atives Commemorating the 150th Anniver- 
 sary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln may 
 very well be the forerunner of wisely spaced 
 kindred events that strike a powerful respect 
 deep in the heart of the American people. 
 
 We suggest that this ceremony be used as 
 a yardstick for other events, similarly con- 
 ceived, that may now be taken out of the 
 dusty pages of biography and history. We 
 believe that these, too, can be transformed 
 into dynamic educational spectacles, to en- 
 rich the respect of the American people and 
 the peoples of the world for the American 
 tradition whose greatest exemplar is Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 The Committee on Arrangements 
 
 [xin]
 
 Public Law 85-775 
 House Joint Resolution No. 648-2 
 
 Providing for a joint session of Congress for commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth 
 
 anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Whereas Thursday, February 12, 1959, will mark 
 the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 birth of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of 
 the United States; and 
 
 Whereas Mr. Lincoln is our best example of that 
 personal fulfillment which American institutions 
 permit and encourage; and 
 
 Whereas his memory endures in the hearts and 
 minds and strivings of his own people in every 
 generation; and 
 
 Whereas his actions, words, and deeds and their 
 meaning bring hope, fortitude, and renewed con- 
 viction to the freedom loving people who are in 
 mental and physical agony all over the world; 
 and 
 
 Whereas he declared: "I wish all men to be free."; 
 and 
 
 Whereas a century ago he said: "Our reliance is in 
 the love of liberty which God has planted in our 
 bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of 
 the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of 
 all men, in all lands, everywhere."; and 
 
 Whereas he wrote: "As I would not be a slave, so 
 I would not be a master. This expresses my idea 
 of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the 
 extent of the differences, is no democracy."; and 
 
 Whereas he once admonished us: "The dogmas of 
 the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy pres- 
 ent. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, 
 and we must rise with the occasion. As our case 
 is new, so we must think anew, and act anew."; 
 and 
 
 Whereas he calls upon us: "Let every American, 
 every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his 
 posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, 
 never to violate in the least particular, the laws 
 of the country; and never to tolerate their viola- 
 tion by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did 
 to the support of the Declaration of Independence, 
 so to the support of the Constitution and laws, 
 let every American pledge his life, his property, 
 and his sacied honor; let every man remember 
 that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood 
 of his father, and to tear the charter of his own 
 and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the 
 laws, be breathed by every American mother, to 
 the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap; let it be 
 taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; 
 let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in 
 almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, pro- 
 claimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts 
 of justice. And, in short, let it become the po- 
 litical religion of the Nation; and let the old and 
 the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and 
 the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and 
 conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars."; 
 and 
 
 Whereas "it is for us the living ... to be dedicated 
 here" to the principles of those who, like Mr. 
 Lincoln, "gave the last full measure of devotion"; 
 and 
 
 Whereas he was himself once a member of this hon- 
 orable body; and 
 
 [xv]
 
 Whereas on Monday, February 12, 1866, in the 
 presence of the President of the United States, 
 the members of his Cabinet, the Chief Justice and 
 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, the 
 diplomatic corps, officers of the Army and Navy, 
 assistant heads of departments, the governors of 
 States and Territories, and others in authority, the 
 two Houses of Congress convened in joint session 
 to hear "an address upon the life and character 
 of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United 
 States," pronounced by an eminent historian, the 
 Honorable George Bancroft: Now, therefore, be it 
 Resolved by the Senate and House of Represent- 
 atives of the United States of America in Congress 
 assembled, That on Thursday, February 12 next, the 
 sesquicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln 
 shall be commemorated by a joint session of the Con- 
 gress, and to that end the President of the Senate 
 will appoint four Members of the Senate and the 
 Speaker of the House will appoint four Members of 
 
 the House of Representatives joindy to constitute a 
 Committee on Arrangements. 
 
 The Committee on Arrangements shall plan the 
 proceedings, issue appropriate invitations and select 
 a distinguished Lincoln scholar to deliver the me- 
 morial address; and be it further 
 
 Resolved, That the President of the United States, 
 the Vice President of the United States, Secretaries 
 of departments, heads of independent agencies, 
 offices and commissions, the Chief Justice and Asso- 
 ciate Justices of the Supreme Court, the diplomatic 
 corps, assistant heads of departments, and the mem- 
 bers of the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission be 
 invited to join in this commemoration. 
 
 Sam Rayburn, 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
 Carl Hayden, 
 President of the Senate pro tempore. 
 
 Approved August 27, 1958. 
 
 DwiGHT Eisenhower. 
 
 [xvi]
 
 Joint Session of Congress in the Hall of the 
 House of Representatives 
 
 Held pursuant to the Provisions of House Joint Resolution 648, 8ph Congress, 
 Commemorating the i^oth Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln 
 
 The Joint Committee on Arrangements, 
 Fred Schwengel, Chairman 
 
 For the Senate: Paul H. Douglas, of Illinois; 
 Everett M. Dirksen, of Illinois; John Sherman 
 Cooper, of Kentucky; Vance Hartke, of Indiana. 
 
 For the House: Peter F. Mack, Jr., of Illinois; 
 WiNFiELD K. Denton, of Indiana; Fred Schwen- 
 gel, of Iowa; William G. Bray, of Indiana. 
 
 The Program for the Joint Session 
 
 Prelude U.S. Army Band Orchestra 
 
 Maj. Hugh J. Curry, Leader 
 
 Presiding officer The Speaker 
 
 Hon, Sam Rayburn 
 
 Invocation Rev. Bernard Braskamp, D.D. 
 
 The Chaplain of the House of Representatives 
 Distinguished guests presented. 
 
 Songs The Idlers, Choral Group of Cadets, 
 
 U.S. Coast Guard Academy 
 Reading of the Gettysburg Address . . Fredric March 
 
 Address Carl Sandburg 
 
 Benediction . . . Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, D.D. 
 The Chaplain of the Senate 
 
 The Speaker of the House presided. 
 The Doorkeeper announced the Vice Pres- 
 ident and Members of the U.S. Senate, who 
 
 entered the Hall of the House of Represent- 
 atives, the Vice President taking die chair 
 at the right of the Speaker and the Senators 
 occupying seats in front of the Representa- 
 tives on the east and west side of the main 
 aisle. 
 
 The Doorkeeper announced the following 
 guests: 
 
 Former Vice President of the United States 
 Henry A. Wallace. 
 
 The assistant heads of departments ; heads 
 of independent agencies, offices, and commis- 
 sions ; Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 
 honorary and advisory members, Director 
 and Assistant Director; and Civil War Cen- 
 tennial Commission Director and Assistant 
 Director who occupied seats assigned them 
 on the floor. 
 
 The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief 
 of Staff of the Army, Chief of Naval Opera- 
 tions, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Com- 
 mandant of the Marine Corps, Commandant 
 of the Coast Guard, generals of the Army, 
 fleet admirals who occupied seats assigned 
 them on the floor.
 
 The Chief Justice of the United States and 
 the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, 
 who occupied seats on the left of the rostrum. 
 
 The Ambassadors, Ministers, and Charges 
 d'Affaires of foreign governments who oc- 
 cupied seats assigned them on the floor. 
 
 The members of the President's Cabinet 
 who occupied seats in front of and on tlie 
 right of the rostrum. 
 
 Mr. Fredric March, escorted by the com- 
 mittee of Senators and Representatives, took 
 his place at the Clerk's desk. [Applause, the 
 Members rising.] 
 
 Mr. Carl Sandburg, escorted by the com- 
 mittee of Senators and Representatives, took 
 his place at the Clerk's desk. [Applause, the 
 Members rising.] 
 
 The joint session of Congress was called to 
 order by the Speaker. 
 
 INVOCATION 
 
 The Speaker. The invocation will be de- 
 livered by the Reverend Bernard Braskamp, 
 D.D., Chaplain of the House of Representa- 
 tives. 
 
 Dr. Braskamp. I Corinthians 13: 13: And 
 now abideth jaith, hope, and charity, these 
 three; but the greatest of these is charity. 
 
 Most merciful and gracious God, we have 
 assembled here to pay tribute to the life and 
 character of a great American patriot who 
 stood like a giant among his contemporaries 
 and whose record of heroic service has made 
 an indelible impression upon succeeding gen- 
 erations. 
 
 We rejoice that he always kept the windows 
 of his soul open toward the unseen and 
 eternal, whence came his insight and inspira- 
 
 tion, his faith and fortitude, his humility and 
 charity. 
 
 Grant that his indomitable passion for the 
 preservation of the Union may also inspire 
 our longing to promote and preserve the 
 union and concord of God-fearing men and 
 nations in their search and struggle for peace 
 and freedom. 
 
 May our beloved country continue to pray 
 and labor to bring to fulfillment and fruition 
 that blessed day when all the members of the 
 human family shall walk and work together 
 in friendship and fraternity. 
 
 Hear us in the name of the Prince of Peace. 
 Amen. 
 
 THE U.S. army band 
 
 The Speaker. Members of the Congress, 
 we will now have the pleasure of some ren- 
 ditions by the U.S. Army Band under the 
 direction of Maj. Hugh Curry. 
 
 The U.S. Army Band played the following 
 marches: "Adoration," "Spirit of Independ- 
 ence," "Man of die Hour," and "All-Ameri- 
 can Soldier." 
 
 The Speaker. Members of the Congress, 
 we will now be entertained by a choral group 
 known as the Idlers, Cadets of the U.S. Coast 
 Guard Academy. 
 
 The Coast Guard Academy Chorus, the 
 Idlers, under the direction of Bandmaster 
 Donald L. Janse, rendered a medley of ex- 
 cerpts from sacred and secular music : "Lord, 
 Thou Hast Been Our Dwelling Place For- 
 ever," "America," "Dbcie," "When Johnnie 
 Comes Marching Home," "Tramp, Tramp, 
 Tramp, the Boys Are Marching," "Ora Lee," 
 "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Taps," and 
 the closing portion of "Lincoln's Gettysburg 
 
 [2]
 
 Address." Arrangement by Bandmaster 
 Janse. 
 
 The Speaker. Members of the Congress, it 
 is now my great pleasure to present a very 
 famous man who has been heard and seen 
 throughout the country and throughout the 
 world, twice an Academy Award winner, and 
 selected for his present role after consultation 
 with the Motion Picture Association of the 
 United States of America. I take great pleas- 
 ure, therefore, in presenting to you a distin- 
 guished citizen, a fine man, and a great artist, 
 Fredric March. [Applause, the Members 
 rising.] 
 
 Mr. March will now read the Gettysburg 
 Address. 
 
 READING OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 
 
 Mr, March. Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, 
 Members of the Congress, honored guests : 
 
 "Fourscore 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 dedi- 
 cate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hal- 
 low — this ground. The brave men, living 
 and dead, who struggled here, have conse- 
 crated 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 un- 
 finished 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 hon- 
 ored dead we take increased devotion to that 
 cause for which they gave the last full meas- 
 ure 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." 
 [Applause, the Members rising.] 
 The Speaker. And now it becomes my 
 great pleasure, and I deem it a high privilege, 
 to be able to present to you the man who in 
 all probability knows more about the life, the 
 times, the hopes, and the aspirations of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln than any other human being. 
 He has studied and has put on paper his con- 
 ceptions of the towering figure of this great 
 and this good man. I take pleasure and I 
 deem it an honor to be able to present to you 
 this great writer, this great historian, Carl 
 Sandburg. 
 
 [Applause, the Members rising.] 
 Mr. Sandburg. Before beginning this pre- 
 pared address, I must make the remark that 
 this introduction, this reception here calls for 
 humility rather than pride. I am well aware 
 of that. 
 
 Not often in the story of mankind does a 
 man arrive on earth who is both steel and 
 velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as 
 drifting fog, who holds in his heart and 
 
 [3]
 
 mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace 
 unspeakable and perfect. Here and there 
 across centuries come reports of men alleged 
 to have these contrasts. And the incom- 
 parable Abraham Lincoln, born 150 years 
 ago this day, is an approach if not a perfect 
 realization of this character. In the time of 
 the April lilacs in the year 1865, on his death, 
 the casket with his body was carried north 
 and west a thousand miles; and the Ameri- 
 can people wept as never before; bells 
 sobbed, cities wore crepe; people stood in 
 tears and with hats off as the railroad burial 
 car paused in the leading cities of seven 
 States, ending its journey at Springfield, 111., 
 the hometown. During the 4 years he was 
 President he at times, especially in the first 
 3 months, took to himself the powers of a 
 dictator; he commanded the most powerful 
 armies till then assembled in modern war- 
 fare; he enforced conscription of soldiers for 
 the first time in American history ; under im- 
 perative necessity he abolished the right of 
 habeaus corpus; he directed politically and 
 spiritually the wild, massive turbulent forces 
 let loose in civil war. He argued and 
 pleaded for compensated emancipation of 
 the slaves. The slaves were property, they 
 were on the tax books along with horses and 
 cattle, the valuation of each slave written next 
 to his name on the tax assessor's books. Fail- 
 ing to get action on compensated emancipa- 
 tion, as a Chief Executive having war powers 
 he issued the paper by which he declared the 
 slaves to be free under military necessity. 
 In the end nearly $4 billion worth of prop- 
 erty was taken away from those who were 
 legal owners of it, property confiscated, 
 wiped out as by fire and turned to ashes, 
 
 at his instigation and executive direction. 
 Chattel property recognized and lawful for 
 300 years was expropriated, seized without 
 payment. 
 
 In the month the war began he told his 
 secretary, John Hay: 
 
 My policy is to have no policy. 
 
 Three years later in a letter to a Kentucky 
 friend made public, he confessed plainly: 
 I have been controlled by events. 
 
 His words at Gettysburg were sacred, yet 
 strange with a color of the familiar: 
 
 We cannot consecrate — we cannot hallov^r — this 
 ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
 struggled here, have consecrated it, far beyond our 
 poor power to add or detract. 
 
 He could have said "the brave Union men." 
 Did he have a purpose in omitting the word 
 "Union?" Was he keeping himself and his 
 utterance clear of the passion that would not 
 be good to look back on when the time came 
 for peace and reconciliation ? Did he mean 
 to leave an implication that there were brave 
 Union men and brave Confederate men, liv- 
 ing and dead, who had struggled there ? We 
 do not know, of a certainty. Was he thinking 
 of the Kentucky father whose two sons died 
 in battle, one in Union blue, the other in Con- 
 federate gray, the father inscribing on the 
 stone over their double grave, "God knows 
 which was right"? We do not know. His 
 changing policies from time to time aimed at 
 saving the Union. In the end his armies won, 
 and his Nation became a world power. In 
 August of 1864 he wrote a memorandum that 
 he expected to lose the next November elec- 
 tion. Sudden military victory brought the tide 
 his way; the vote was 2,200,000 for him and 
 
 [4]
 
 i,8oo,ooo against him. Among his bitter op- 
 ponents were such figures as Samuel F. B. 
 Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and Cyrus 
 H. McCormick, inventor of the farm reaper. 
 In all its essential propositions the southern 
 Confederacy had the moral support of power- 
 ful, respectable elements throughout the 
 north, probably more than a million voters 
 believing in the justice of the southern cause. 
 While the vs'ar vv^inds howled he insisted that 
 the Mississippi was one river meant to belong 
 to one country, that railroad connection from 
 coast to coast must be pushed through and 
 the Union Pacific Railroad made a reality. 
 While the luck of war wavered and broke 
 and came again, as generals failed and cam- 
 paigns were lost, he held enough forces of the 
 North together to raise new armies and sup- 
 ply them, until generals were found who 
 made war as victorious war has always been 
 made, with terror, frightfulness, destruction, 
 and on both sides, North and South, valor 
 and sacrifice past words of man to tell. In 
 the mixed shame and blame of the immense 
 wrongs of two crashing civilizations, often 
 with nothing to say, he said nothing, slept 
 not at all, and on occasions he was seen to 
 weep in a way that made weeping appropri- 
 ate, decent, majestic. As he rode alone on 
 horseback near Soldiers Home on the edge 
 of Washington one night his hat was shot off; 
 a son he loved died as he watched at the bed ; 
 his wife was accused of betraying information 
 to the enemy, until denials from him were 
 necessary. An Indiana man at the White 
 House heard him say, "Voorhees, don't it 
 seem strange to you that I, who could never 
 so much as cut off the head of a chicken, 
 
 should be elected, or selected, into the midst 
 of all this blood.?" He tried to guide Gen- 
 eral Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, a Democrat, 
 three times Governor of Massachusetts, in the 
 governing of some 17 of the 48 parishes of 
 Louisiana controlled by the Union armies, an 
 area holding a fourth of the slaves of Louisi- 
 ana. He would like to see the State recog- 
 nize the Emancipation Proclamation: 
 
 And while she is at it, I think it would not be 
 objectionable for her to adopt some practical sys- 
 tem by which the two races could gradually live 
 themselves out of their old relation to each other, 
 and both come out better prepared for the new. 
 Education for the young blacks should be included 
 in the plan. 
 
 To Gov. Michel Hahn, elected in 1864 by 
 a majority of the 11,000 white male voters 
 who had taken the oath of allegiance to the 
 Union, Lincoln wrote: 
 
 Now you are about to have a convention which, 
 among other things, will probably define the elec- 
 tive franchise. I barely suggest for your private 
 consideration whether some of the colored people 
 may not be let in — as for instance the very intelli- 
 gent and especially those who have fought gallandy 
 in our ranks. 
 
 Among the million words in the Lincoln 
 utterance record, he interprets himself with 
 a more keen precision than someone else 
 offering to explain him. His simple opening 
 of the House divided speech in 1858 serves 
 for today: 
 
 If we could first know where we are, and whither 
 we are tending, we could better judge what to do, 
 and how to do it. 
 
 To his Kentucky friend, Joshua F. Speed, 
 he wrote in 1855: 
 
 Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be 
 pretty rapid. As a Nation we began by declaring 
 
 [5}
 
 that "all men are created equal, except Negroes." 
 When the know-nothings get control, it will read 
 "all men are created equal except Negroes and 
 foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, 
 I shall prefer emigrating to some country where 
 they make no pretense of loving liberty. 
 
 Infinitely tender was his word from a 
 White House balcony to a crowd on the 
 White House lawn: 
 
 I have not willingly planted a thorn in any 
 man's bosom. 
 
 Or to a military Governor: 
 
 I shall do nothing through malice; what I deal 
 with is too vast for malice. 
 
 He wrote for Congress to read on Decem- 
 ber I, 1862: 
 
 In times like the present men should utter noth- 
 ing for which they would not willingly be respon- 
 sible through time and eternity. 
 
 Like an ancient psalmist he warned Con- 
 gress: 
 
 Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We 
 will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No per- 
 sonal significance or insignificance can spare one 
 or another of us. The fiery trial through which 
 we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor 
 to the latest generation. 
 
 Wanting Congress to break and forget past 
 traditions, his words came keen and flashing: 
 
 The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for 
 the stormy present. We must think anew, we 
 must act anew, we must disenthrall ourselves. 
 
 They are the sort of words that actuated 
 the mind and will of the men who created 
 and navigated that marvel of the sea, the 
 'Nautilus, nnd her voyage from Pearl Harbor 
 and under the North Pole icecap. 
 
 The people of many other countries take 
 Lincoln now for their own. He belongs to 
 
 them. He stands for decency, honest deal- 
 ing, plain talk, and funny stories. "Look 
 where he came from — don't he know all us 
 strugglers and wasn't he a kind of tough 
 struggler all his life right up to the finish?" 
 Something like that you can hear in any 
 nearby neighborhood and across the seas. 
 Millions there are who take him as a per- 
 sonal treasure. He had something they 
 would like to see spread everywhere over the 
 world. Democracy } We cannot say exactly 
 what it is, but he had it. In his blood and 
 bones he carried it. In the breath of his 
 speeches and writings it is there. Popular 
 government } Republican institutions } 
 Government where the people have the say- 
 so, one way or another telling their elected 
 leaders what they want? He had the idea. 
 It is there in the lights and shadows of his 
 personality, a mystery that can be lived but 
 never fully spoken in words. 
 
 Our good friend, the poet and playwright 
 Mark Van Doren, tells us: 
 
 To me, Lincoln seems, in some ways, the most 
 interesting man who ever lived. He was gende 
 but this gendeness was combined with a terrific 
 toughness, an iron strength. 
 
 And how did Lincoln say he would like 
 to be remembered ? Something of it is in this 
 present occasion, the atmosphere of this room. 
 His beloved friend. Representative Owen 
 Lovejoy, of Illinois, had died in May of 1864, 
 and friends wrote to Lincoln and he replied 
 that the pressure of duties kept him from 
 joining them in efforts for a marble monu- 
 inent to Lovejoy, the last sentence of Lin- 
 coln's letter, saying: 
 
 Let him have the marble monument along with 
 the well-assured and more enduring one in the 
 
 [6}
 
 hearts of those who love liberty, unselfishly, for all 
 men. 
 
 Today we may say, perhaps, that the well- 
 assured and most enduring memorial to Lin- 
 coln is invisibly there, today, tomorrow, and 
 for a long time yet to come. It is there in the 
 hearts of lovers of liberty, men and women— 
 this country has always had them in crisis — 
 men and women who understand that 
 wherever there is freedom there have been 
 those who fought, toiled, and sacrificed for 
 it. 
 
 I thank you. [Applause, the Members ris- 
 ing-] 
 
 BENEDICTION 
 
 The Speaker. The benediction will be pro- 
 nounced by Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, 
 Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. 
 
 Dr. Harris. Our Father God, from this na- 
 tional sacrament of gratitude and memory, 
 with the winged words of a prophet of our 
 day lodged in our hearts, with die light of 
 Thy countenance lifted upon us. 
 
 Send us forth into this testing, trying time 
 with the faith and patience of Thy servant, 
 Abraham Lincoln — like him — 
 
 To be true to all truth the world denies. 
 Not tongue-tied by its gilded lies; 
 Not always right in all men's eyes. 
 But faithful to the light within. 
 Amen. 
 
 RETIREMENT OF DISTINGUISHED GUESTS 
 
 The Doorkeeper escorted the distinguished 
 guests from the Chamber in the following 
 order: 
 
 The members of the President's Cabinet. 
 
 The Chief Justice of the United States and 
 the Associate Justices of the United States 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 The ambassadors, ministers, and charges 
 d'affaires of foreign governments. 
 
 The assistant heads of departments; heads 
 of independent agencies, offices, and commis- 
 sions; Lincoln Sesquicentenial Commission, 
 honorary and advisory members, Director 
 and Assistant Director; and Civil War Cen- 
 tennial Commission Director and Assistant 
 Director. 
 
 The Chairman, Joint Chief of Staff, Chief 
 of Staff of the Army, Chief of Naval Opera- 
 tions, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Com- 
 mandant of the Marine Corps, Commandant 
 of the Coast Guard, generals of the Army, 
 and fleet admirals. 
 
 JOINT SESSION DISSOLVED 
 
 The Speaker. The Chair declares the joint 
 session of the two Houses dissolved. 
 
 Thereupon (at ii o'clock and 58 minutes 
 a.m.) the joint session of the two Houses of 
 Congress was dissolved. 
 
 The Members of the U.S. Senate retired to 
 their Chamber. 
 
 [7}
 
 History of the 1959 Joint Session Ceremony 
 
 Prepared by the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress 
 
 THE OBSERVANCE OFFICIALLY by the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States — which 
 he did so much to preserve — of the i5odi an- 
 niversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln 
 was inevitable and inherent in the very na- 
 ture of an event for which mankind to the 
 end of time will be enormously grateful. 
 But the launching of the Lincoln ceremonies 
 by the Congress began actually July 24, 1958. 
 On that day Fred Schwengel, of Davenport, 
 Iowa, the Representative from the First Dis- 
 trict of that State, and a member of the party 
 that Lincoln helped to create, introduced into 
 the House of Representatives his House Joint 
 Resolution 648. This resolution, which pro- 
 vided for a joint session to do homage to 
 Lincoln on his anniversary, promptly passed 
 the House. In the Senate the next day it was 
 at once referred to the Committee on Rules 
 and Administration. With a minor techni- 
 cal amendment the measure was reported in 
 the Senate on August 13, 1958, and passed on 
 August 18, 1958. Two days later the House 
 concurred in the Senate version of the reso- 
 lution and the document, presented to Presi- 
 dent Eisenhower August 25, 1958, was signed 
 by him on August 27, becoming Public Law 
 
 85-775- 
 
 Further official weight was added to the 
 intent of Government when the House and 
 the Senate of the succeeding Congress, the 
 86th, first session, respectively on January 27, 
 1959, and January 28, 1959, passed House 
 Concurrent Resolution 57. This additionally 
 implemented Public Law 85-775 o^ the pre- 
 vious Congress, by specifically designating the 
 Hall of the House of Representatives as the 
 place for the commemorative Joint Session, 
 and the date and time as February 12, 1959, 
 at II o'clock. It satisfied parliamentary 
 subtleties inherent in legislation that over- 
 laps from one Congress to the next. Above 
 all it gave a certain solidarity of spirit to exer- 
 cises that now bore the fully documented 
 sanction of two Congresses of the United 
 States. The 85th Congress had served as the 
 point of origin, and the 86th was now to serve 
 as die point of execution. 
 
 While this is perhaps all that may be said 
 of the chronology of the legislation the be- 
 ginnings of the commemorative idea have a 
 more romantic background, again indicating 
 the strong hold Lincoln has on the imagina- 
 tion of America. Fred Schwengel, who has 
 a penchant for rummaging through the para- 
 phernalia as well as the facts of history, had 
 
 [9]
 
 come to the Library of Congress to immerse 
 himself deep in Lincoln facts, Lincoln memo- 
 rabilia, Lincoln past and present. He read 
 of the Joint Session which on February 12, 
 1866 — a year after Lincoln's death — com- 
 memorated Lincoln. This ceremony was 
 featured by an address by the eminent his- 
 torian, George Bancroft. For Repre; entative 
 Schwengel this marked the beginning of the 
 march of events that led to the 1959 program. 
 
 The Representative walked in on David C. 
 Mearns, Chief of the Manuscript Division of 
 the Library of Congress and Assistant Li- 
 brarian for the American Collections. 
 Mearns is also the incumbent of the Chair of 
 American History in the Library of Congress 
 and is regarded among scholars one of the 
 foremost authorities on Lincoln. Armed 
 with ideas and plans Schwengel then went 
 to Republican leaders who supported his en- 
 thusiasm with ideas of their own. They 
 suggested bringing the leadership of the 
 Democratic Party in the House within the 
 compass of the Schwengel project. Mean- 
 while Mearns worked on the praparation of 
 the legislation itself. Response from the 
 Democratic leadership in the House was no 
 less sympathetic than that of the Republican 
 leadership. Speaker Rayburn in the House 
 and Vice President Nixon in the Senate took 
 up the Schwengel cause and carried it 
 through. 
 
 When the legislation was passed, Rayburn 
 and Nixon each named four members to the 
 Joint Committee from the House and Senate 
 membership, respectively, as the law stipu- 
 lated. On this original committee were Sen- 
 ator William E. Jenner, and Representative 
 F. Jay Nimtz, both of Indiana, and both per- 
 
 forming superb services for the commemora- 
 tion until retirement and the fortunes of po- 
 litical life failed to bring about their return 
 with the 86th Congress. They were replaced 
 in the Senate by Vance Hartke and in the 
 House by William G. Bray, both also of In- 
 diana. The Joint Committee named Dr. 
 Mearns as its secretary and elected Schwengel 
 to the chairmanship. 
 
 The committee and its secretary formulated 
 the plans in the course of a series of meetings 
 in Representative Schwengel's office. The 
 decision to have Carl Sandburg the orator of 
 the day was immediate, plainly logical, and 
 of course unanimous. The results proved 
 the wisdom of this choice. No living Amer- 
 ican, it was felt, could as of that moment 
 occupy that most honored spot in the pro- 
 gram and fill it with the matchless ap- 
 propriateness that belonged to the career, the 
 thinking, and the distinction of this poet and 
 biographer. In a thousand biographies and 
 commentaries none had so deeply and so 
 completely caught the life and meaning of 
 Abraham Lincoln as this unique American 
 with his Pulitzer prize winning six-volume 
 
 Lincoln biography. 
 
 The other decisions by the committee for 
 the program proper proved each in its place 
 happily fortuitous. The decision to honor 
 Fredric March, the noted actor, with the role 
 of reader of the Gettysburg Address came as 
 the result of consultations with the Motion 
 Picture Association of America. For the 
 musical portion of the program it was de- 
 cided to remain within the Federal agencies. 
 Thus the Department of Defense was con- 
 sulted and the United States Army Band Or- 
 chestra, under Major Hugh J. Curry, was 
 
 [lo]
 
 selected to perform the prelude. The com- 
 mittee had heard much of the company of 
 young men known as The Idlers, a choral 
 group of cadets from the United States Coast 
 Guard Academy. Their special talents fitted 
 the occasion particularly because of their skill 
 and intimacy with songs of the Abraham 
 Lincoln period. For the rest it was not only 
 desirable and appropriate but protocol for the 
 Honorable Sam Rayburn to serve as Presid- 
 ing Officer and for Vice President Nixon to 
 occupy the seat at his right on the Speaker's 
 dais in the House. The committee likewise 
 considered itself fortunate that it could call 
 on Rev. Bernard Braskamp, D.D., the Chap- 
 Iain of the House, to deliver the invocation, 
 and Rev. Frederick Brown Harris, D.D., 
 Chaplain of the Senate, for the benediction. 
 
 Where the questions of space and seating 
 were matters of protocol the committee re- 
 garded itself extremely fortunate to be free 
 of decision making. Thus the Vice Presi- 
 dent — as always in formal joint sessions — had 
 his fixed place on a level of prominence with 
 the Speaker. The Senators had their accus- 
 tomed places in front of the Representatives 
 on the east and west side of the main aisle. 
 
 The Chief Justice of the United States and 
 the Associate Justices took their designated 
 places on the left of the rostrum. There 
 were the seats on the floor for the Chairman 
 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Staff 
 of the Army, Chief of Naval Operations, 
 Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Commandant 
 of the Marine Corps, Commandant of the 
 Coast Guard, generals of the Army, and fleet 
 admirals. Former Vice President of the 
 United States Henry A. Wallace was among 
 the guests in the Chamber and was warmly 
 
 welcomed by many of his friends in both 
 Houses and both parties and by other guests 
 at the ceremony. There were seats on the 
 floor also for the Washington diplomatic 
 corps. There was applause when Carl Sand- 
 burg and Fredric March, each escorted by a 
 committee of Senators and Representatives, 
 took their places at the Clerk's desk, the 
 members rising in both instances. There 
 were hushed moments in the great Chamber, 
 moments of respect and awe and dedication 
 and deep feeling. In the meantime the mem- 
 bers of the President's Cabinet had taken 
 their places in front of and on the right of 
 the rostrum. On the floor also were the Lin- 
 coln Sesquicentennial Commission, honorary 
 and advisory members. Director and Assist- 
 ant Director; and Civil War Centennial Com- 
 mission Director and the Assistant Director. 
 There were other official guests as determined 
 by practice and protocol from departments, 
 independent agencies, and offices and com- 
 missions. 
 
 The President himself was unable to come. 
 
 For the rest the committee was confronted 
 with problems in seating that were practi- 
 cally impossible to surmount. The adamant 
 tyranny of space limitations compelled the 
 committee to allocate just one ticket to each 
 Member of Congress for guest purposes. 
 The galleries of the great Chamber were 
 filled with no space to spare. An atmosphere 
 of expectation hovered over the assemblage 
 as of an impending ceremony of immense 
 significance. The scene was charged with 
 a sense of history — an impressive addition to 
 the annals of time. The distinguished and 
 commanding presence of the Speaker of the 
 House was seen to leave his chair and ap- 
 
 [ii]
 
 proach the rostrum, himself the embodiment event for which this committee had so de- 
 
 of whole decades of national crises. He voutly labored. 
 
 called the Joint Session to order. And in The ceremonies had begun. 
 
 the stillness that followed his presentation of On the pages that follow is the full story 
 
 the Reverend Braskamp to deliver the invo- as reported in the Congressional Record for 
 
 cation, there opened the commemoration February 12, 1959, pages 2058-2060. 
 
 [12]
 
 PRESIDENT EISENHOWER and the grandeur and glitter of Washington participated in the National 
 Lincoln Sesquicentennid dinner on the eve of the Joint Session of Congress commemorating the i^oth 
 anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. The dinner was given by the Lincoln Group of the District of 
 Columbia and the National Sesqtiicentennial Commission. It too\ place in the Statler Hotel and ivas the 
 fete that launched in the Capital the succession of events marl{ing the Lincoln festivities. The President's 
 address tvas officially characterized as "remar\s" in a White House release, and emphasized the grasp of 
 the Lincoln legend on the great minds of the world and peoples everywhere. ". . . Abraham Lincoln," 
 the President said, "belongs not only to the ages, but to all humanity." The full address follows: 
 
 Remarks by the President 
 
 At the National Lincoln Sesquicentennial Dinner 
 February ii, 1959 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. Vicc President, and 
 distinguished guests: It is natural, I 
 think, that speaking last in such a program 
 as this, we should expect some duplications 
 and repetition. But I should reassure you as 
 I begin by saying that my talk is only five or 
 six minutes, so if there are these inevitable 
 duplications I may hope and pray that you do 
 not find them lengthy or too boring. 
 
 Ninety-eight years ago today the President- 
 elect of the United States boarded a train in 
 Springfield, 111., to start the long journey 
 to his Nation's Capital. That same day a 
 Washington newspaper reported the election 
 in Montgomery, Ala., of another President, 
 Jefferson Davis, and from Fort Sumter came 
 a report of "preparations for attack." 
 
 In bidding farewell to Springfield, Lincoln 
 shared his innermost thoughts with old 
 friends. In part, he said: "I now leave, not 
 
 knowing when or whether ever I may re- 
 turn, with a task before me greater than that 
 which rested upon Washington. Without 
 the assistance of that Divine Being who ever 
 attended him, I cannot succeed. With that 
 assistance I cannot fail." 
 
 Four years and two months later Abraham 
 Lincoln was dead — but the Union again 
 united. "Now," said Secretary of War Stan- 
 ton, "he belongs to the ages." 
 
 But Abraham Lincoln belongs not only to 
 the ages, but to all humanity. Immortality 
 is his in the hearts of all who love freedom 
 everywhere in the world. 
 
 Each year two million people visit the Lin- 
 coln Memorial in Washington. 
 
 In New Delhi, a Lincoln Society is estab- 
 lishing a museum in his honor. High school 
 students in Tokyo last summer ranked him 
 as the most respected of all world figures. 
 
 [13]
 
 "Of all the great national statesmen of his- 
 tory," Russia's Tolstoy thought, "Lincoln is 
 the only giant." 
 
 In the Caucasian mountains, a wild chief- 
 tain asked of a visitor, "Tell us about the 
 greatest ruler in the world. We want to 
 know something about this man who was 
 so great that he even forgave the crimes of 
 his greatest enemies and shook brotherly 
 hands with those who had plotted against 
 his life." 
 
 The first President of modern China, Sun 
 Yat-sen, found his three basic principles of 
 government in Lincoln's Gettysburg Ad- 
 dress. 
 
 For many years India's Prime Minister 
 Nehru has kept, on the study table, a brass 
 mold of Lincoln's right hand. "I look at it 
 every day," Nehru tells us; "it is strong, firm, 
 and yet gentle ... it gives me great 
 strength." 
 
 The birth, 150 years ago, which we here 
 honor, gave the Nation a son who a half- 
 century later was summoned to lead our Re- 
 public through the tragedy of civil war. And 
 as Lincoln fought for union and liberty he 
 insisted always that "the struggle of today is 
 not altogether for today — it is for a vast fu- 
 ture also." 
 
 As we turn our eyes to that future, other 
 words of his seem applicable. He said: "The 
 tendency to undue expansion is unquestion- 
 ably the chief difficulty. How to do some- 
 thing, and still not do too much, is the ques- 
 tion. ... I would not borrow money. I am 
 against an overwhelming, crushing system. 
 Suppose, that at each session. Congress shall 
 first determine how much money can, for 
 that year, be spared for improvements; then 
 apportion that sum to the most important 
 objects." 
 
 That the spirit of Lincoln be close at hand 
 as we meet each successive challenge to free- 
 dom is the earnest hope of all Americans— 
 indeed it is the hope of freedom's sentinels 
 wherever they stand. 
 
 Pushing always ahead in our quest for a 
 just peace and freedom for all men we can 
 do no better than live by his prescription: 
 "By the best cultivation of the physical world, 
 beneath and around us; and the intellectual 
 and moral world within us, we shall secure 
 an individual, social, and political prosperity 
 and happiness, whose course shall be onward 
 and upward, and which, while the earth en- 
 dures, shall not pass away." 
 
 Thank you very much. 
 
 C14]
 
 The address, bejore the President spoke, was made by the Right 
 Reverend Richard S. M. Emrich, Bishop of Michigan, and follows: 
 
 Lincoln and the Judgments 
 of the Almighty 
 
 An Address at the National Lincoln Sesquicentennial Dinner 
 By Richard S. Emrich, Bishop of Michigan 
 
 SINCE IT WOULD BE almost sinfuI to waste 
 the time of such a gathering as this, let 
 me get down to business. The subject of my 
 short address is Lincoln and the Judgments 
 of the Almighty. 
 
 It seems to me that Lincoln's sesquicen- 
 tennial celebration will be most successful if 
 many speakers, according to their positions 
 and abilities, speak not on Lincoln generally 
 but on some aspect of his great and mysteri- 
 ous person. Let them drill, as it were, into a 
 small surface, and bring up the riches be- 
 neath. To that end, therefore, I am speak- 
 ing on the next to the last paragraph of the 
 Second Inaugural Address, the profoundest 
 part of a profound document. 
 
 You will remember that, in the first part 
 of the Inaugural, Lincoln told of the begin- 
 ning of the war, and, assuming that his lis- 
 teners knew the present state of the war as 
 well as he, offered no predictions as to the 
 future. In the last part, in words often 
 quoted, he stated the spirit with which the 
 
 future and reconstruction should be ap- 
 proached — "with malice toward none; with 
 charity for all"; "to bind up the Nation's 
 wounds," etc. But in between there occurs 
 the long passage in which the war is seen as 
 God's judgment on this country for slavery. 
 All knew the conflict was immediately 
 caused by the rebellion — that was the imme- 
 diate cause; but the deepest and final cause 
 for Lincoln was the judgment of the Al- 
 mighty on slavery. In the first part of the 
 Inaugural he had stated, "All knew that this 
 interest was somehow the cause of the war." 
 He spelled this out in the paragraph to 
 which we are turning our attention. "If we 
 shall suppose that American slavery is one 
 of those offenses which in the Providence of 
 God must needs come, but which, having 
 continued through His appointed time. He 
 now wills to remove, and that He gives to 
 both North and South this terrible war as 
 the woe due to those by whom tlie offense 
 came, shall we discern therein any departure 
 
 [15]
 
 from those divine attributes which the be- 
 lievers in a hving God always ascribe to 
 Him ? Fondly do we hope— fervently do we 
 pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
 speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it 
 continue until all the wealth piled by the 
 bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of 
 unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
 every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall 
 be paid by another drawn by the sword, as 
 was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
 must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord are 
 true and righteous altogether'." 
 
 Lincoln says, then, that the war is God's 
 judgment on America for slavery, that Amer- 
 ica must pay. What he said about judgment 
 is, of course, the teaching of the Scriptures; 
 it is old-time religion ; it is a far remove from 
 some of the effeminate and sentimental reli- 
 gion of a comfortable suburb. It is fearful 
 and awful. Lincoln saw God's hand in the 
 darkness. He did not say that perhaps this 
 is true; but that it is true; and the first ques- 
 tion to which we address ourselves is: Did 
 Lincoln really believe this, or was he simply 
 saying something he felt ought to be said? 
 Was it profound conviction, or was it 
 rhetoric ? 
 
 I 
 
 li was profound conviction. To Mrs. Gur- 
 ney he had written, "Surely He intends some 
 great good to follow this mighty convulsion 
 which no mortal could make and no mortal 
 could stay." To A. G. Hodges he had writ- 
 ten, "If God now wills the removal of a great 
 wrong, and wills also that we of the North, 
 as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly 
 for our complicity in that wrong, impartial 
 
 history will find therein new cause to attest 
 and reverence the justice and goodness of 
 God." To ex-Senator Louis F. Wilson he 
 had written, "If we do not right God will let 
 us go our way to ruin, and if we do right. 
 He will lead us safely out of this wilderness. 
 He means to establish justice." 
 
 On August 12, 1861, the same thought is 
 in the proclamation of a national fast day, 
 ". . . it is particularly fit for us to recognize 
 the hand of God in this terrible visitation, 
 and in sorrowful remembrance of our own 
 faults and crimes as a nation and as indi- 
 viduals, to humble ourselves before Him and 
 to pray for His mercy — to pray that we may 
 be spared further punishment, though most 
 justly deserved." 
 
 But the real proof that this belief in God's 
 judgment was a central and deep conviction 
 lies in the fact that it was not a popular thing 
 to say — and he knew it. In a letter to Thur- 
 low Weed he wrote, "I expect the latter to 
 wear as well as — perhaps better than — any- 
 thing I have produced, but I believe it is not 
 immediately popular. Men are not flattered 
 by being shown that there has been a differ- 
 ence of purpose between the Almighty and 
 them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to 
 deny that there is a God governing the 
 world." I will not cite further quotations 
 (of which there are many) because I think 
 these few reveal that this paragraph of the 
 Second Inaugural was profound conviction, 
 the central and deepest meaning for Lincoln 
 of the war. 
 
 This, then, came from the fabric of his 
 soul and mind, and, in contrast to the mod- 
 ern style, from his own pen. What we sow. 
 
 [16}
 
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 THE WOMAN OF LINCOLN S CHOICE. MARY TODD, OF A WELL-TO-DO KENTUCKY FAMILY, COULD 
 SPEAK FRENCH FLUENTLY AND WAS OTHERWISE WELL EDUCATED. THEY MET AT A BALL IN 1839, 
 THE COURTSHIP LASTING THREE YEARS.
 
 LINCOLN S STEPMOTHER GAVE HIM LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 LATER LIFE, IS THE ONLY ONE IN EXISTENCE.
 
 THE SECOND INAUGURAL, MARCH 4, 1865. HERE THE WORDS WERE SPOKEN: "wiTH MALICE TOWARD 
 NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR ALL . . ." THAT CONSTITUTE ONE OF THE GREATEST UTTERANCES IN 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
 
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 we reap; these are grapes of wrath; tliere is 
 the wind and the whirlwind. Since God 
 wills justice, He hates injustice; this country 
 had sinned; the cup was full and America 
 must drink. Lincoln believed this. God 
 ruled and the humble Lincoln was His 
 prophet. 
 
 II 
 
 Now, as is well known, Lincoln had a deep 
 mystical sense which developed as the war 
 progressed. Events, and his own personal 
 suffering, drove him to God. But we some- 
 times forget that he also had an inquisitive, 
 careful, and scrupulous mind, and that he 
 took nothing, particularly in religion, simply 
 on authority. If during this sesquicentennial 
 celebration we want something of his great- 
 ness, his wisdom, and profundity to rub off 
 onto our poorer natures, we must, therefore, 
 with our reason try to spell out what he 
 meant by the Civil War as the judgment of 
 God. How did his careful mind arrive at 
 this deep conviction? Can we, in our secu- 
 lar and man-centered culture, so spell this 
 out that we will see its truth, and have its 
 truth affect the decisions which all of us must 
 make? I think so. Let me set the presup- 
 positions of Lincoln's thought, and then go 
 on to suggest how judgment works. 
 
 First, Lincoln approached life, God, and 
 the mystery of this universe with a tremend- 
 ous sense of justice. He said, "Slavery is a 
 violation of eternal right. We have tempo- 
 rized with it from the necessities of our con- 
 dition; but as sure as God reigns and school- 
 children read, that black foul lie can never be 
 consecrated into God's hallowed truth." A 
 tremendous sense of justice. 
 
 Second, in Lincoln's thought God reigns 
 and is King. "The will of God," said he, 
 "prevails." For our man-centered and secu- 
 lar culture God tends to be simply an asset — 
 a resource to be called upon when we think 
 we need Him. We tend to look upon God 
 as Mussolini looked upon the King of Italy, 
 keeping him around for traditional and deco- 
 rative reasons. But, like Mussolini, with our 
 big buildings, speed, and achievements, we 
 know we are running the show. But one of 
 Lincoln's favorite poems was, "Let not the 
 spirit of mortal be proud"; and, seeing the 
 rise and fall of nations, the littleness and 
 brevity of human life, he said, "The will of 
 God prevails." 
 
 Third, when men do evil and run counter 
 to the grain of the universe, they pay for it. 
 God judges men and nations, not simply in 
 the hereafter, but now. And America was 
 being judged for slavery, because slavery is 
 contrary to human dignity, corrupting both 
 the slave and the slaveholder. "One-eighth 
 of the whole population," said Lincoln, "were 
 colored slaves, not distributed generally over 
 the Union, but localized in the soudiern part 
 of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and 
 powerful interest. All knew that this interest 
 was, somehow, the cause of the war." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Now, how does this judgment come? 
 Lincoln said that all knew it — slavery was 
 "somehow" the cause of the war. Let's see 
 if we can understand this somehow, so that 
 it will give us wisdom for the present. How 
 does God judge nations? 
 
 Put it this way. God's judgment is the 
 logical result of an inner contradiction. Here 
 
 [17] 
 
 43592—59-
 
 was a nation dedicated, after careful and 
 reverent thought by its Founding Fathers, 
 "to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal," with certain inalienable rights — ex- 
 cept Negroes in slavery. That was the inner 
 contradiction, the seed of trouble that grew 
 and grew and grew. This was the great con- 
 tradiction in American life. This was wrong. 
 Since freedom for Lincoln was rooted in the 
 nature of things, this was contrary to the 
 grain of the universe, a national defiance of 
 God's will for men. It was a glaring contra- 
 diction. The whole Nation, since men are 
 joined by blood, geography, and sin, was in- 
 volved in this. He saw the storm coming, 
 although no mortal could foresee then, any 
 more than we can foresee now, what form 
 the judgment would take. The contradiction 
 grew and grew, until in i860 there were three 
 billion dollars worth of slaves. Slavery was, 
 then, obviously tied up with all property 
 rights; then States rights became involved in 
 the contradiction; and then, of course, the 
 question as to whether new territories would 
 be slave or free. 
 
 Great issues were blurred by lesser issues, 
 and fanatical and self-righteous men on both 
 sides further confused the issue. And then, 
 as Lincoln saw the maturing fruit of the con- 
 tradiction, he woke from a kind of political 
 sleep and said, "This Nation cannot endure 
 half slave and half free," and, quoting our 
 Lord, "A house divided against itself cannot 
 stand." The division of the Nation, the blood 
 shed in Kansas, the agony of the Civil War — 
 all this was the logical result of the inner con- 
 tradiction. And since we were all Ameri- 
 cans, and all implicated in it, we all suffered 
 
 together. It was the logical outcome of an 
 inner contradiction; but who could have 
 foreseen that hundreds of thousands of white 
 men would die fighting each other because 
 black men were in bondage ? 
 
 "Yet if God wills that it continue until all 
 the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hun- 
 dred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
 be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
 by the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
 with the sword, as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judg- 
 ments of the Lord are true and righteous al- 
 together'." 
 
 The judgment of God is not, then, to be 
 thought of as some arbitrary, irrational visi- 
 tation crashing in from on high. It is not to 
 be thought of as some dive-bomber coming 
 out of the blue with no relationship between 
 the judgment and the sin, even though un- 
 foreseen consequences may give it that ap- 
 pearance. Judgment is rather like a subma- 
 rine moving beneath the surface of the sea of 
 life. It is an inner maturing contradiction. 
 The prophet sees the moral contradiction; he 
 warns; he sees the ominous shadow of the 
 submarine and the coming trouble; and we 
 less gifted people say that he is an alarmist, 
 a pessimist, and highly impractical. The 
 prophet sometimes makes a mistake in pre- 
 dicting exactly where the submarine will 
 break surface. But he knows that this is a 
 moral universe, and that if a contradiction 
 is written into the national scene, there must 
 be a day of reckoning. Indeed, in this mys- 
 terious universe the reckoning takes place 
 all tlie time, as when the news of the contra- 
 diction with which we still struggle is beamed 
 
 C18}
 
 to Africa and Asia. And there are other con- 
 tradictions which are maturing; for surely 
 if "a house divided against itself cannot 
 stand" was true of this Nation in 1858, it is 
 true of our world in 1959. 
 
 To know that God reigns frees men, as it 
 did Lincoln, from catering to the crowd ; for 
 Lincoln feared God more than he did the 
 crowd. Popularity meant less and less to 
 him. When he delivered the Second 
 Inaugural, there was about him a strangely 
 lofty and spiritual quality which Gladstone 
 noted in the speech. To know that God 
 reigns leads one to think carefully and to 
 make decisions soberly, for this is God's 
 world and one had better be careful lest a de- 
 cision is contrary to His will. Lincoln was 
 deeply concerned about God's will. It makes 
 one look at history, not only in terms of prog- 
 ress and a gradual development, but in terms 
 
 of decisions — decisions made in the fear of 
 God. 
 
 We little, proud men always do a lot of 
 proud talking, but in judgment God mounts 
 the pulpit and He speaks; and we see, if we 
 have eyes to see, what we are being punished 
 for. God not only creates, but He destroys. 
 He is not only the light as when He blesses 
 a home, but He is the darkness of a nation's 
 travail, and this truth, which Lincoln saw so 
 clearly, is in the words we all know so well. 
 
 Mine eyes have seen the glory 
 Of the coming of the Lord, 
 He is trampling out the vintage 
 Where the grapes of wrath aie stored. 
 He hath loosed the fateful lightning 
 Of His terrible swift sword — 
 His truth is marching on. 
 
 No wonder that Gladstone said that in the 
 Second Inaugural Lincoln spoke like a 
 prophet of old! 
 
 [19}
 
 The evening program in full is reprinted here: 
 
 Program 
 
 MASTER OF CEREMONIES 
 
 The Honorable Fred Schwengel 
 
 Member of Congress 
 
 President, Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia 
 
 INVOCATION 
 
 The Reverend George M. Docherty 
 Pastor, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church 
 
 RECITATION 
 Fredric March 
 
 "MEET MR. LINCOLN" 
 Film produced by the National Broadcasting Company 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 The Right Reverend Richard S. M. Emrich 
 
 Bishop of Michigan 
 
 REMARKS 
 Headtable Dignitaries 
 
 REMARKS 
 The President 
 
 BENEDICTION 
 
 The Reverend Frederick Brown Harris 
 
 Chaplain, United States Senate 
 
 MUSIC 
 Pre-dinner music provided by the orchestra of the United States Marine Corps Band 
 
 Special organ selections by Miss Marjorie Meinert. Selections from "The Union" and "The 
 Confederacy" by Richard Bales. Produced for Columbia Records by Goddard Lieber- 
 son. Church of the Reformation Cantata Choir; Anthony Chanaka, pianist; Richard 
 Bales conducting. 
 
 "We must all lay aside our prejudices and 
 
 march, shoulder to shoulder, in the great army of Freedom." 
 
 (Speech, Bloomington, May 29, 1856.) 
 
 [21]
 
 The one-hour ceremony of the Joint Session was followed almost immediately by the formal opening of 
 the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Exhibition in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress. Here is published 
 in part the account of that ceremony as reported in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin, Febru- 
 ary i6, 1959, together with a brief account of Mr. Sandburg's memorable tribute that evening to Lincoln 
 in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium. 
 
 The Lincoln Sesquicentennial Year 
 
 THE LINCOLN SESQUICENTENNIAL EXHIBI- 
 TION in the Library of Congress was 
 opened formally in tlie Great Hall last Thurs- 
 day, February 12, immmediately following 
 the Joint Session of Congress, with a cere- 
 mony that won the approval of a capacity 
 audience with its fitting simplicity. Shortly 
 after 12:15 p.m., when Carl Sandburg had 
 arrived after his address to Congress to seat 
 himself in the Great Hall with other guests 
 of honor and the staff had gathered around 
 the balconies above the hall, the Librarian of 
 Congress brought to the platform the speak- 
 ers who came to pay tribute to Abraham Lin- 
 coln on the 150th anniversary of his birth. 
 Opening the program with brief observa- 
 tions on the occasion, Librarian Mumford 
 presented Senator John Sherman Cooper of 
 Kentucky, Chairman of the Lincoln Sesqui- 
 centennial Commission. Senator Cooper 
 spoke briefly and introduced the Honorable 
 Richard M. Nixon, Vice President of the 
 United States, and the Honorable Sam Ray- 
 burn, Speaker of the House of Representa- 
 tives. The Vice President and the Speaker 
 presented the main addresses of the occasion 
 
 in moving tribute to the i6th President. 
 Seated on the platform were Senator Theo- 
 dore Francis Green of Rhode Island and 
 Representative Omar Burleson of Texas — 
 both of the Joint Committee on the Library — 
 who were introduced by the Librarian. At 
 the close of the ceremony, Mr. Mumford in- 
 troduced Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg 
 and Alfred Whital Stern, Lincoln collector 
 of Chicago whose gifts have enriched the 
 collections of Lincoln materials in the Li- 
 brary of Congress. The guests then ad- 
 journed to the North and South Galleries at 
 either side of the Great Hall to view the 
 exhibition. 
 
 That evening, under the auspices of the 
 Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Lit- 
 erature Fund, Mr. Sandburg presented a 
 tribute to Lincoln before a capacity audience 
 in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium. He 
 spoke of Lincoln and books and of the in- 
 fluence of great minds upon him through his 
 reading, a subject Mr. Sandburg found fitting 
 ing in what he called "this great arsenal of 
 books." His tribute moved the audience to 
 
 [23]
 
 a prolonged and standing ovation. Later 
 Mr. Sandburg went to the Whittall Pavilion 
 to greet a large group of listeners who had 
 not been able to sit in the crowded audito- 
 rium and who had waited hopefully to catch 
 a glimpse of him after listening to his lecture 
 over a speaker system. 
 
 The Lincoln Sesquicentennial Year is ob- 
 served in the Map Reading Room (on the 
 ground floor of the Library's Annex Build- 
 ing) with a display of maps relating to the 
 
 life and activities of the "Great Emancipa- 
 tor." Included in the exhibit is a map of the 
 United States in 1809, a photostatic repro- 
 duction of a land plat surveyed and mapped 
 by Lincoln in 1836, a historic map showing 
 the regions associated with events in his life, 
 and a panorama portraying the town of New 
 Salem, 111., during the period 1831-37, when 
 Lincoln was a resident there. This Lincoln 
 exhibit will be on view in Room G-1009 
 until March 31. 
 
 C24].
 
 WlNSTON-SALEMjO^pMl. 
 
 ...J «;.rtHl tJi"-*-'" __ u CUv Verrcc 
 
 JlUlCi D ^ ■ 
 
 Abraham Uneoln 
 
 • ltd ('»"'< '""""l.^. .tin tic.nf* >" * * ^fh iVJ^ '" "'"" *", 
 
 THE tlOL^lON POST . 
 
 THURSDAY F E B R I. A R V 1 : . 1 9 J 9 [ 
 
 /.\ IIOISTOS n JREHOVSE 
 
 Pholo of Clcan-Shaven j ^"fidi 
 
 Pholo of Cl('an-Shavenl>;'"f'dence /„ fhpT^ 
 Li-H-oh. Is Discovereal ^l^;"co/n's p/^^^'e 
 
 Oo'ne Uimuch a >li.pmriii otl'Hil.-idrltHnB antf Imk in? n-H... ■" "P Llnrn/^ ., , " "'ri afn, i_i 1 
 
 ,1,1, i.umH rtfiirbl 111- tnri N-iicdT im-' i1"iic F ur "<•->■ ^ nfiri Ir ■r^^-.i.- - -! 
 
 The Mecmiug of LincoluJ^ 
 
 Hi, Cau.ion a.Kl C.ura.o in Mc.'-f^ 
 ";..nan l>rol>Wn. ^^ ^^^l^'l^-';"^'' 
 
 „, .KMNODH."*"" ';*',';,i'.Lv,t ' " '■; v:. 
 
 Incomparable' Lincoln 
 Is Eulogized By Sandburg 
 
 , 01 V«' 
 
 Cl.« 
 
 
 
 
 
 ,r(if 
 
 alip( 
 
 The Lincoln l-^H 
 
 ^,-,,,s vr -B" "■'' '' 
 
 a pin ol 
 
 
 
 tolJ > 
 
 r>vi i 
 
 A FRAGMENT OF AMERICAN OPINION, NORTH AND SOUTH, REACTING TO 
 THE LINCOLN SESQUICENTENNIAL.
 
 wmvM 
 
 j::^. ..-.-» ^^J^^'J ,^«0.2^aY NEWS 
 
 
 T «,inv ft bir-.hday orsW nr Lincoln *( 
 
 li'-jitfc' 
 
 .11'/ 
 
 ®be Seattle ®ime$ 
 
 femndrd Augtit 10. 1896 
 
 AN t^lDEJ'ENDE^a NEWSPATEB 
 
 ELMER E- TODD, Criairmin of Uie Bo*riJ F A BLETHEN. Praddat 
 
 J K. BLETHEN Vice Prtudenl 
 
 W. K. B LFTHLN, Publlihw 
 
 Tiiur.sDAvr FF L mrARY"i:;."l9.''9 
 
 Time Enhances His Luster 
 
 TmS 13 ih>' L'iOth anniversary of Ihe death, bwum" Hi* dusHir 
 
 bMi of Alirflham Lincoln. predion 
 tn "Prnnfffifld, III. the home of hi? To p.trapl 
 
 Rdult yi'af^. the cnvo ^' <>( ^^ " ' ' 
 
 Lincoln _, 
 
 ' w^KfnNcTx>; 
 
 
 a,b,u over r.tl.l probl'"" "" '",„ „,,„, It .0. at' 
 
 t::",., ™— „-;i'r r." o- u«o,. »».. — 
 
 Un' oil. 
 
 Groped His Way 
 
 f''-njmftinr« 
 
 
 _ *I*ny 3oiiih rii™ii 1 I 
 
 r.onr „k— ... ■ , „ . ,j ../-.oiJiMr. CFRDIIiBY 12 1959 
 
 THURSDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 12, 1959 
 
 [Lincoln Text for 1959 
 
 ird.u.^ Lincoln, t he man or legend. 
 
 IdM miriratlon to epIvp problems 
 Jy ace none more so than the van- 
 Irnse^ impmcing on his country at 
 or the sesquicenlcAnial of his 
 
 The case can be made Ihat italM, 
 \khlle loudly clalmln* righli, actuaUy I 
 abdicated them In Ihla highly emotion- ^ 
 al case and thereby_beijiJt=^bUlly , 
 ^^j^it^^i-— ^ |mend. 
 " could I 
 
 MM.T'"'"^" 
 
 ■Vomort^* 
 
 
 L\RLL 
 
 l.STO>> 
 
 TlH- 
 
 
 «r,v'.i> 
 
 
 
 
 "^fl^OUSTQN CHRONICLE 
 
 EDITORIAL PAGE 
 
 Thursday Februars' 12 
 Pace 2. S^clio n 2 
 
 Naf/on Honors Pres/'denf Who 
 Towered Above Civ// Con//icf 
 
 ih Sbi h deter rn mat lonl 
 
 The mtion Wday honors Ahrihsm .he ^'' '; " „,c„,(,ceolW .o his sec J 
 
 Linclln cena.ol, or. ol U.e grea.es. »« ^^Jf^'^™'; „,';,„ He closed .ha.| 
 
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 Sample Television and Radio Coverage on the 
 150th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln 
 
 ON THE NEXT PAGE is printed a sample of 
 the type of coverage that marked the 
 television and radio broadcasts of the 150th 
 anniversary of Abraham Lincoln from three 
 Washington, D.C., stations. According to 
 television and radio officials there is hardly 
 a working television or radio set in the 
 country tliat did not at some time have 
 some mention of the ceremonies in connec- 
 tion with the Lincoln anniversary, or that did 
 not hear or see dramatic material based on 
 Lincoln's life. This means that all told more 
 than 4,500 commercial stations carried some 
 phase of the events or background dramatic 
 
 material to at least 60 inillion Americans. It 
 has been estimated that perhaps 83 percent of 
 the households of America through television 
 alone were brought within range of the Lin- 
 coln commemorative events. Moreover the 
 ceremonies at the Joint Session were taped 
 and carefully recorded. Thus already there 
 have been heard in different parts of the coun- 
 try days after the event either all or part of 
 the exercises in which Carl Sandburg played 
 so prominent a role. It means also that in 
 decades to come, perhaps centuries, genera- 
 tions yet unborn will hear and see the cere- 
 monies that so impressed the country in 1959, 
 
 C25}
 
 I. WRC — Television and Radio 
 
 Program 
 
 1. Meet Mr. Lincoln (Feb. ii) 
 
 2. Sandburg Address (Feb. 12 — shown twice) 
 
 3. Portrait of Lincoln with Mark Van Doren (Feb. 12) 
 
 4. Broadcast of Sandburg Address 
 
 Length of Time 
 
 3omins. (TV) 
 6omins. (TV) 
 i5mins. (Radio) 
 3omins. (Radio) 
 
 135 mins. 
 
 II. WTTG — Television 
 
 Program 
 
 1. How Chance Made Lincoln President (film) 
 
 2. Abe Lincoln in Illinois (film on Giant Playhouse) 
 
 3. TV Reader's Digest 
 
 Length of Time 
 
 30 mins. 
 
 no mins. 
 
 30 mins. 
 
 170 mms. 
 
 IV. WTOP — Television and Radio 
 
 Program Length of Time 
 
 1. Ed. Sullivan Show, Pat Boone in "The Rivalries" 
 
 (Feb. 8th) 60 mins. (TV) 
 
 2. Small World, "If Lincoln Were Alive, Would He Be a 
 
 Republican or a Democrat?" 30 mins. (TV) 
 
 90 mms. 
 
 MORE THAN 60 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES HEARD LINCOLN DISCUSSED 
 OR SAW SOME PHASE OF HIS LIFE DRAMATIZED 
 
 [26]
 
 National Association of Broadcasters 
 
 t771 N Street, N. W., Washington 6, D. C 
 
 HABOLD E. FEIXOWS 
 
 OBJLIBMAN OP thu doajid 
 
 March 31, I959 
 
 The Honorable 
 
 Fred Schwengel 
 
 House of Representatives 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Dear Congressman Schwengel: 
 
 An informal survey taken by the National Association of 
 Broadcasters subsequent to the Joint Session of Congress, Feb- 
 ruary 12, 1959. honoring the memory of Abraham Lincoln revealed 
 that all national radio and television networks in the United 
 States broadcast all or part of this session either "live" or 
 on a delayed basis or through the scheduling of tape excerpts 
 or film clips on regularly scheduled newscasts. 
 
 Further, there is indication that Mr. Sandburg's remarks 
 were rebroadcast, either in whole or in part, on numerous oc- 
 casions after February 12. As a matter of fact, there are still 
 requests from stations for "tapes" of his remarks. 
 
 I believe it is fair to estimate that this Joint session, 
 through the broadcast media, has been brought to the attention 
 of at least 60 million Americans during this period of time 
 (February 12 until the present). And we look upon this as a 
 conservative estimate. 
 
 The committees of the Congress arranging the program 
 are to be congratulated upon its newsworthiness and its historic 
 si0iif icance . 
 
 Sincerely, 
 HEF/Js 
 
 [27]
 
 MONTAGE OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE 
 
 Congress Weeps for Lincoln 
 
 From the Manchester Guardian of February ig, ig^g 
 By Max Freedman 
 
 WITH PROUD THANKSGIVING and noblc 
 grief the Nation today honored its 
 martyred President. All over the United 
 States there were ceremonies to mark the hun- 
 dred and fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln's 
 birth; but the supreme tribute was reserved 
 for the Halls of Congress, where he once 
 served and whose criticism so often fell like 
 a scourge upon him in the agony of the Civil 
 War. 
 
 Never in living memory has there been an 
 occasion in Washington comparable to this, 
 so moving in its contrasts, so memorable in 
 its appeal, so majestic in its inspiration. The 
 discords and debate which jangle through 
 Congress were forgotten as the soul of 
 America stood revealed for all the world to 
 see. 
 
 A nation may be judged by its heroes; and 
 no small people could have nurtured Lincoln 
 or honored him in this matchless national 
 tribute. Unforgettable were the contrasts. 
 The scene was the great Chamber of the 
 House of Representatives, to which had been 
 invited the Members of the Senate for a joint 
 session of Congress. 
 
 As the Senators came in it was impossible 
 to forget that earlier scene, so heart-shaking 
 in the intensity of its pathos, when the South- 
 ern Senators on the eve of the Civil War bade 
 a solemn valedictory to Congress and de- 
 parted for their homes and States to stand 
 with their neighbors in armed defense of 
 the South. 
 
 Directly in front of the Speaker's platform 
 were seated Chief Justice Warren and the As- 
 sociate Justices of the Supreme Court, all in 
 their black robes, and visibly impressed by 
 their ovation by Congress and the still more 
 eager welcome extended by the crowded gal- 
 leries. 
 
 In everyone's mind was the Court's work in 
 completing the liberation of the Negro so 
 nobly begun by Lincoln as an act of military 
 necessity but graced with a virtue that the 
 years have widened and enriched. Lincoln 
 wanted the Negro to come into his inheri- 
 tance of freedom; he wanted him to vote; 
 he wanted him to be fully educated ; and he 
 hoped the start in these tasks of freedom 
 would be quickly made with the ablest and 
 most intelligent Negroes. 
 
 C29]
 
 These old dreams are now woven into the 
 fabric of freedom — and are entangled, too, in 
 the knotted cords of race hatred. But today 
 there was a truce in the ancient quarrel as 
 the spirit of Lincoln made a sanctuary out of 
 Congress. In little things as in great, the 
 chivaky of idealism flashed its message. 
 
 But the greatest tribute of all was in seeing 
 the emotion of Congress as tears stood in the 
 eyes of many Senators and Congressmen. 
 They listened with profound emotion to Mr. 
 Fredric March read the Gettysburg Address 
 and gave three separate ovations to the ca- 
 denced, passionate eulogy of Lincoln spoken 
 by Carl Sandburg, the poet-biographer. 
 
 Mr. Sandburg patted Mr. March's hand in 
 encouragement as the actor arose to read the 
 famous speech. "Not often in the story of 
 mankind," Mr. Sandburg quietly began, 
 "does a man arrive on earth who is both steel 
 and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as 
 drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind 
 the paradox of terrible storm and peace un- 
 speakable and perfect." 
 
 "In the time of April lilacs in the year 
 1865," came Mr. Sandburg's deep voice, "the 
 casket with Lincoln's body was carried north 
 and west a thousand miles; and the Ameri- 
 can people wept as never before — bells 
 sobbed, cities wore crepe, people stood in 
 tears and with hats off as the raihoad burial 
 car paused in the leading cities of seven 
 States, ending its journey at Springfield, Illi- 
 nois, the home town." 
 
 Mr. Sandburg recalled that during the 
 
 four years in which Lincoln was President 
 "he at times, especially in the first three 
 months, took to himself the powers of a 
 dictator." When Lincoln came to Gettys- 
 burg he spoke not of the brave Union men 
 but simply of "the brave men, living and 
 dead, who struggled here." Did he have a 
 purpose in omitting the word "Union" .? No 
 one knew for sure, but perhaps Lincoln was 
 thinking of the Kentucky father whose two 
 sons died in battle, one in Union blue, the 
 other in Confederate gray, the father in- 
 scribing on the stone over the double grave, 
 "God knows which was right." 
 
 Now, Mr. Sandburg concluded, die people 
 of many other countries took Lincoln for 
 their own because "he belongs to them." 
 Lincoln stood for decency, honest dealing, 
 plain talk, and funny stories. His most en- 
 during memorial was "in the hearts of lovers 
 of liberty, men and women who understand 
 that wherever there is freedom there have 
 been those who fought and sacrificed for it." 
 
 The applause went on until it seemed as 
 if it never would end. Several Justices of the 
 Supreme Court cleared their eyes of tears; 
 so did Senator Lyndon Johnson and Senator 
 Dirksen, the two party leaders of the Senate. 
 Finally Mr. Sandburg and Mr. March left 
 the hall, stopping, appropriately enough, to 
 salute the members of the Supreme Court 
 and to shake hands for an instant with Chief 
 Justice Warren, who symbolizes the victory 
 of law for which Lincoln, even in the heat 
 of battle, prayed and worked. 
 
 [30]
 
 Epilog 
 
 ue 
 
 THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON ARRANGEMENTS 
 of the Congress of the United States for 
 the observance of the 150th anniversary of 
 the birth of Abraham Lincoki knov/s of no 
 more effective form of mass education in 
 American history and the American tradi- 
 tion than the manner of marking a historic 
 event as recorded in this report. 
 
 It has the compelling impact of an imme- 
 diate news event. 
 
 A Lincoln, a Jefferson, a Hamilton, a 
 Washington celebration draws into a mas- 
 sive cooperative mechanism the Government 
 itself and all its branches. It puts to work 
 the vast and farflung apparatus of all forms 
 of communication media — radio, television, 
 the public prints. It adds to all these the 
 finest and noblest living spirits and organi- 
 zations in American culture. It is a bril- 
 liant interlocked public and private enter- 
 prise aimed to excite an American's pride in 
 his heritage. 
 
 Joining a celebrated immortal of the cur- 
 rent hour like Carl Sandburg with the most 
 revered name in American history, especially 
 where the relationship is that of a great biog- 
 rapher to his subject, provides the highest 
 order of human drama. The event in the 
 Chamber of the House of Representatives 
 
 brought tears to the eyes of men who for a 
 lifetime had seen no end of ceremonies yet 
 recognized in this one the fiame of eternal 
 history. 
 
 Speaker Rayburn was heard to say imme- 
 diately after the exercises: 
 
 "This is the most dramatic thing I have 
 seen in this Congress in my lifetime." 
 
 From the newsmen themselves there was 
 the testimony that the Sandburg speech, for 
 the first time and like no event in the past 32 
 years, brought the entire press gallery en 
 bloc to its feet in a demonstration of emotion 
 and applause. 
 
 Thus the committee hesitates to end this 
 report without humbly recommending that 
 the future be rendered rich with like com- 
 memorations. The committee knows that 
 there may not always be available the pro- 
 found ingredients for drama, respect, and 
 excitement afforded by the Lincoln story and 
 the genius of Carl Sandburg. But the Ameri- 
 can tradition is powerful in the greatness and 
 the attraction of its heroes. If the stature of 
 the hero and the circumstances of the story 
 do not happen to furnish in all their aspects 
 the quality of uniqueness inherent in the Lin- 
 coln legend there are still opportunities with- 
 out number for enriching Americans and 
 
 [31]
 
 peoples everywhere in the meaning of of like projects. Thus Americans will come 
 
 America. to know their own story more intimately and 
 
 The committee hopes that the success of peoples everywhere on this earth will learn 
 
 this anniversary will be taken as an incentive to recognize the American dream and per- 
 
 for a carefully planned long-term program haps seek to emulate it. 
 
 [32} 
 
 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING 0FFICEr1959
 
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