[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 12, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H235-H236]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, it is February 12, 2002, and on this calendar 
date 193 years ago today, just scarcely two lifetimes ago, came into 
the world the 16th President of the United States of America, the 
father of the Republican Party, the leader who ended slavery and at the 
same time saved the Union.

                              {time}  1245

  I speak, of course, of President Abraham Lincoln, born humbly in 
Kentucky, raised proudly in Indiana, who then moved and pursued a 
public and adult career in Illinois.
  The Bible tells us, ``If you owe debts, pay debts. If honor, then 
honor. If respect, then respect. I thought today, in the midst of all 
our debates about other pressing national issues, as now having the 
privilege of being able to call Abraham Lincoln, the Congressman 
Abraham Lincoln from 1848, a colleague, that it would be all together 
fitting to rise today and remember the occasion of his birth, and to do 
so, Mr. Speaker, with his own words.
  Abraham Lincoln spoke of many issues, but of course freedom and the 
abolition of the evil of human slavery were chief among them.
  April 1859: ``Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for 
themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.''
  August 1858: ``As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. 
This expresses my idea of democracy.''
  July 1858: ``I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn 
in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are 
created equal.''
  And in June of 1858: ``A house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved, I do not expect the 
House to fall, but I do expect it to cease to be divided. It will 
become all one thing or all the other.''
  Abraham Lincoln was also a man of very profound faith, which inspires 
many millions to this day, writing: ``I have been driven many times 
upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to 
go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the 
day.''
  In September of 1864, he wrote: ``In regard to this Great Book, I 
have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good 
the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.'' And 
in the creation of the very first proclamation of Thanksgiving and a 
national day of prayer in October of 1863, the President wrote: ``I do 
therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, 
and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign 
lands, to set apart and observe this last day of

[[Page H236]]

Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our 
beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them 
that while offering up the ascriptions justly do to Him for such 
singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble 
penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to 
His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or 
sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably 
engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand 
to heal the wounds of the nation and restore it as soon as it may be 
consistent with Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, 
harmony, tranquility and union.''
  President Abraham Lincoln was lastly a man who understood and 
cherished liberty and knew where its threats would be presented. As he 
said in January of 1838: ``At what point shall we expect the approach 
of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect 
some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a 
blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with 
all the treasure of the earth in their military chest, could not by 
force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a 
thousand years of trial. At what point then is the approach of danger 
to be expected? I answer: If it ever reach us, it must spring up from 
among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we 
must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a Nation of free men, we 
must live through all time or die by suicide.''
  February 12, 1809, a day the world and America became richer.

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