[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 11 (Thursday, February 12, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S684-S685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE LINCOLN LEGACY

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise today, on the 189th anniversary of 
his birth, to pay tribute to an American of commonsense ways and 
uncommon character.
  Let me read to you from the autobiography of Abraham Lincoln, which 
he penned in December of 1859.

       I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. 
     My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished 
     families. . .
       There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for 
     education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. 
     Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of 
     Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since.
       The little advance I now have upon this store of education, 
     I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of 
     necessity.

  Lincoln concluded his autobiography just four paragraphs later with 
these words: ``There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that 
there is not much of me.''
  That was in 1859, one year before the election that thrust Abraham 
Lincoln into the Presidency--before the Civil War broke out and helped 
crystallize all that he believed about his nation--before everything he 
believed about himself was tested.
  Never again could Abraham Lincoln truthfully make the claim that 
``there is not much of me.''
  Mr. President, on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, poet and 
biographer Carl Sandburg traveled here to the Capitol in 1959 to 
address a joint session of both Houses of Congress.
  The description he painted that day of the man born in Hardin County, 
Kentucky, was delivered in words far more eloquent than any I could 
offer up:
  He said,

       Not often 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 unspeakable and perfect. . .
       The people of many other countries take Lincoln now for 
     their own. He belongs to them. He stands for decency, honest 
     dealing, plain talk, and funny stories. . . Millions there 
     are who take him as a personal 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.

  Mr. President, there are many American leaders I admire--for their 
convictions, their passion, and their pursuit of truth--but Abraham 
Lincoln towers above most all of them.
  At a troubled moment in our nation's history, he gave a voice to the 
growing number of Americans who felt out of place with the politics of 
the time. America is a place of inclusion, they argued, not exclusion. 
A place of freedom, not of slavery. The United States must stay united, 
they said, not severed into disparate parts. Abraham Lincoln spoke for 
what America was meant to be when he spoke of inclusion, unity, and 
equality, and by the sheer force of his single-minded dedication, his 
voice kept the Union from splintering forever apart.
  If any one man is responsible for preserving the nation during the 
Civil War, that man is Abraham Lincoln.
  ``Important principles may and must be inflexible,'' said President 
Lincoln in his last public address, delivered in Washington, and for 
that unflinching commitment, his detractors hated him.
  Lincoln was unfit, they said, ``shattered, dazed, utterly foolish'' . 
. . ``a political coward'' . . . ``timid and arrogant.'' And those were 
the words of his fellow Republicans. Outside his party, they labeled 
him ``a mole-eyed monster with a soul of leather'' and ``the present 
turtle at the head of the government.''
  But his simple words and powerful resolve endeared him to the people, 
who looked on him as ``Honest Abe,'' a straightforward and sympathetic 
leader. He was their president, but he was also one of them. So, it was 
a brutal shock to the country when he was shot to death just ten blocks 
from here, during an evening performance at Ford's Theater.
  Mr. President, poised on the edge of the Reflecting Pool on the 
National Mall, overlooking Washington from its place of honor, rests a 
graceful tribute to our sixteenth president. Outside, the Lincoln 
Memorial possesses the lines of a classic Greek temple--inside, you 
will find the soul of an American patriot. Lincoln himself rises 19 
feet toward the sky, sculpted in Georgia White marble, larger than 
life, his eyes forever focused forward. He cannot speak, but the walls 
speak for him. Etched into the stone around him are his words, and each 
time I visit I am struck by the visual marriage of man and message. One 
phrase in particular always makes me pause, a quotation from Abraham 
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, spoken just 28 days before his 
assassination:

       With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
     firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let 
     us strive on to finish the work we are in.

  We have come so far as a nation since those words were first spoken. 
More than one hundred years have passed since brother last took up arms 
against brother, and we are no longer divided by allegiance to a 
Confederate or Union flag. By heritage, we are black Americans, white 
Americans, Italian Americans, Polish Americans, Norwegian Americans--
and united under the Constitution, we are simply Americans.

[[Page S685]]

 Abraham Lincoln did not live to finish the work he began, but the 
pursuit of liberty and inclusion he inspired in a nation has endured.
  More than once in the million recorded words he left behind, Abraham 
Lincoln considered his death and the reputation that history would 
accord him. In keeping with everything else we know about the man, 
however, he sought not a legacy, but his place in humanity. ``Die when 
I may, I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a flower 
wherever I thought a flower would grow.'' Mr. President, Abraham 
Lincoln plucked many weeds during his too-brief life, and sowed a great 
garden of humanity in their place. On the anniversary of his birth, we 
celebrate the towering truths we have reaped from his planting.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand we are in morning business. I 
seek recognition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. The Senator may speak 
up to 10 minutes.

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