The National Park Service and the Lincoln Birthday National Commemorative Committee held a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday for the 214th anniversary of the U.S. president’s birth.
At the event, members of the Park Service and others spoke about the legacy of Lincoln. As well, there was a reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address of 1863.
Mike Litterst, a spokesperson for the National Mall, said what Lincoln dealt with during his presidency relates to today.
“You look at what Abraham Lincoln went through in his presidency: guiding the nation through the Civil War; he reunites the United States; he frees more than four million enslaved people. And the issues that he deals with are many issues that are on the forefront of what the nation is grappling with today,” he said.
During the ceremony, wreaths from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Lincoln Birthday National Commemorative Committee and other organizations were presented.
Michael Null of Austin, Texas, helped present one of the wreaths. He said it is important that the principles Lincoln stood for continue to live on.
“If you don’t memorialize that, don’t put it in textbooks, don’t bring it up in classrooms, people might not remember,” he said.
“Everyone can reflect back on what it meant for Lincoln to do that at the time when the nation was so divided.”