[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 127 (Thursday, September 10, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2244-E2245]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  RECOGNIZING REVEREND WAYNE PERRYMAN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. DAVID G. REICHERT

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 10, 2009

  Mr. REICHERT. Madam Speaker, today I rise in recognition of an 
individual from my district and his efforts to honor the principles of 
President Abraham Lincoln. Reverend Wayne Perryman from Mercer Island, 
Washington, and Kasandra Rae Huff, an 18-year-old student from 
Longview, Washington, created a piece of artwork that was recently 
accepted into the permanent collection of the Abraham Lincoln 
Presidential Library and Museum.
  As our Nation confronts challenging times, we must remember and 
treasure the life and work of President Lincoln as he led this country 
through an extraordinarily difficult period. I commend Reverend 
Perryman and Ms. Huff for their artwork and am pleased to submit the 
text of it on their behalf into the Congressional Record.

       This portrait of Lincoln is the fine work of Miss Kasandra 
     Rae Huff, an eighteen year old high school student from 
     Longview, Washington.
       Kasandra sincerely admired our 16th President, who was 
     perhaps the most lonely person that ever occupied the White 
     House. He was a man not known for his good looks, but for his 
     good heart.
       Many scholars criticize Lincoln for his thoughts regarding 
     what to do with the freed blacks after ending slavery, but 
     few commend him for what he did for blacks by ending slavery. 
     During the past thirty-plus years African Americans have 
     occupied every major cabinet level position in the United 
     States government; two have sat on the United States Supreme 
     Court; several others have run our nation's largest cities, 
     including Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and 
     Atlanta; one headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and 145 years 
     after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, this nation 
     has elected its first black president.
       History reveals that Lincoln's appreciation for blacks was 
     an evolving process, as it was for most Americans. The more 
     exposure he had, the more he appreciated and saw African 
     Americans as equals. By the time he reached Gettysburg on 
     that cold November afternoon in 1863, he was at peace with 
     idea of blacks being equal. Using carefully selected words in 
     a cleverly crafted speech that he had worked on all night, he 
     told those who gathered at the cemetery in Gettysburg what he 
     thought about equality when he spoke these words:
       ``Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth 
     upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and 
     dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
     equal.''
       Even though he wrestled with what to do with the freed 
     slaves after the war, he had grown to appreciate African 
     Americans through his relationship with his black advisor, 
     Frederick Douglass, and his wife's best friend and traveling 
     companion, Ms. Elizabeth Keckley, a black dress designer. 
     (Keckley, a freed black woman, designed dresses for Mary Todd 
     Lincoln and other prominent women of that time.)
       Evidence of Lincoln's evolving feelings toward blacks was 
     clear to everyone when Democrats pressured Lincoln to sit 
     down with Jefferson Davis to negotiate peace. The president, 
     who once thought that saving the union ``without freeing any 
     slave'' was an option, took that option off the table and 
     stated that ``reunion and the emancipation'' were the only 
     grounds for peace. Democrats tried to embarrass and discredit 
     the president by accusing him of prolonging an unnecessary 
     and unpopular war and by placing cartoons in newspapers 
     depicting Lincoln as a ``Widow Maker'' and the killer of 
     young men. Committed to the cause, Lincoln said, ``If at the 
     end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost 
     every friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left, 
     and that friend shall be down inside of me.''
       His renewed commitment to the emancipation of blacks was 
     also reflected in the portion of the Gettysburg Address where 
     he said:
       ``That this nation under God, will have a new birth of 
     freedom and that the government of the people, by the people 
     and for the people shall not perish from this earth.''
       Unfortunately, many critics are quick to quote from 
     Lincoln's speeches prior to the Gettysburg Address, but not 
     as quick to quote from his speeches after the Gettysburg 
     address. Through Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Keckley and 
     the black soldiers who so bravely fought for the Union, 
     Lincoln had gained a greater appreciation than most Americans 
     for blacks. His struggle was not so much over how he would 
     accept the new black citizens, but how his fellow white 
     brothers and sisters who had only a stereotypical view of 
     blacks would accept them.
       With Jefferson Davis leading the nation of the Confederate 
     States, Lincoln was the only president in our lifetime who 
     was faced with the possibility of a future where there would 
     be two separate nations rather than the one that our founding 
     fathers had established. Winning the war and uniting the 
     country was a tremendous accomplishment and that alone should 
     make Lincoln the greatest president of all time. Had he 
     allowed the South to exist as a separate nation, and had we 
     remained as two smaller countries instead of one we know 
     today, becoming a superpower would have been only a dream and 
     never a reality. As two separate (smaller) nations, we would 
     not have grown to be a superpower and our defense of 
     democracies around the world would have never been a 
     possibility. How different the world be, had he failed.
       Had he lost the Civil War, what would have happened to 
     blacks? What would have happened to the Republican Party, the 
     Party of Lincoln? Would the defeat of the Union also have 
     meant the destruction of this new fragile political party? 
     Without the Party of Lincoln, would there have been the 
     Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the 
     Constitution as well as other subsequent Civil Rights 
     legislation to give blacks freedom, citizenship and the right 
     to vote--all of which paved the way for America to elect its 
     first black president?

[[Page E2245]]

       Even though members of the Party of Lincoln honor Ronald 
     Reagan as a great president, he was no Abraham Lincoln. 
     Reagan gave his service to this country, but Lincoln gave his 
     life for his country. Without Lincoln there is a strong 
     possibility that there would be no Republican Party today. We 
     owe it to ourselves to honor this man by keeping the true 
     Legacy of Lincoln alive. Republicans, African Americans and 
     the world as a whole owe this lonely log-splitting country 
     lawyer much more than we will ever know: perhaps even our 
     lives.
       Please help us establish and maintain the Legacy of Lincoln 
     through the Legacy of Lincoln Foundation so that future 
     generations will know of his true greatness and his enduring 
     contribution to the entire world.

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