[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 7, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E287]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        LINCOLN'S LASTING LEGACY

                                 ______


                       HON. GEORGE P. RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, February 7, 1995
  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, many of us are about to return home, to 
the communities we represent and to the constituents we serve, to join 
in observing Lincoln Day. In the words of the man whose birth 186 years 
ago we celebrate on February 12 and whose memory we venerate, that 
commemoration is ``altogether fitting and proper.'' It also is, in my 
belief, remarkably timely when we pause to compare Mr. Lincoln's views 
on Government to what we understand is the mandate that brought us to 
Washington.
  Recently, when our neighbors on Capitol Hill, the Library of 
Congress, put on public display the original manuscripts of the 
Gettysburg Address, I joined with tens of thousands of our fellow 
Americans who visited this exhibition. While there I talked with 
members of the Library staff in charge of rare documents and was given 
a brief tour of the stacks in which are held some of the papers of our 
past Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.
  I assure my colleagues and constituents, Mr. Speaker, that it was one 
of the more memorable moments of my life to hold in my hands 
correspondence and other materials actually written by Mr. Lincoln. 
And, of course, there was that simple signature we have seen reproduced 
so many times in so many places, ``A. Lincoln.''
  The experience moved me to look anew at Lincoln works and words. At 
every turn it seems, Mr. Lincoln demonstrated a strict adherence to the 
ideals of our Founders. His proclamation in 1863 said:

       No service can be more praiseworthy and honorable than that 
     which is rendered for the maintenance of the Constitution and 
     the consequent preservation of free government.

  The Lincoln basic belief in self-government is compellingly clear in 
an 1858 Chicago speech:

       I have said very many times . . .  that no man believed 
     more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies 
     at the bottom of all my ideas of just government from 
     beginning to end.

  Mr. Lincoln's definition of Government's purpose stands at the best I 
ever have encountered. Speaking in Springfield, IL in 1854, he said:

       The legitimate object of government is to do for a 
     community of people whatever they need to have done, but 
     cannot do at all, or cannot do so well for themselves, in 
     their separate and individual capacities. In all that people 
     can individually do as well for themselves, government ought 
     not to interfere.

  The preeminent position of the people in public affairs was a Lincoln 
guiding light. As a Member of this House of Representatives, he spoke 
from the floor in 1848:

       In leaving the people's business in their own hands, we 
     cannot be wrong.

  In his First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln asked in 1861:

       Why should there not be a patient confidence in the 
     ultimate justice of the people; Is there any better or equal 
     hope in the world?

  On Independence Day that year, the message to Congress from President 
Lincoln advised:

       The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely 
     reverse their own deliberate decisions.

  And, from perhaps one of the most-repeated of Lincoln quotations 
comes his counsel about the ultimate wisdom of the people:

       You can fool all the people some of the time and some of 
     the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the 
     people all of the time.

  Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln also addressed the meaning of mandates 
from the people who elect us. His 1861 speech in Pittsburgh as 
President-elect referring to the balloting behind him should admonish 
us today as we reflect on our own elections:

       We should do neither more nor less than we gave the people 
     reason to believe we would when they gave us their votes.

  These are the Lincoln lessons. They are the Lincoln legacy.
  As I prepare to commemorate Lincoln Day with friends and family in 
Fresco, Mariposa, and elsewhere in California's 19th District, I pledge 
that my service will remain faithful to Lincoln principles.


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