[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[February 12, 1994]
[Pages 244-245]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
February 12, 1994

    Good morning. Twenty-six days ago the people of Los Angeles suffered 
a devastating earthquake. Sixty-one people died; thousands of homes were 
destroyed; thousands of people were hospitalized. Highways were broken 
and twisted by the violent movement of the earth.
    Because of the extent of the damage, I have just approved $8.6 
billion in emergency disaster assistance for the people of California to 
help them rebuild roads and other public structures, to fix gas lines, 
provide small business loans, and help pay the expenses of people who 
have lost their homes. Many have lost everything. With $900 million in 
aid already on the way, the total payment nears $10 billion, the largest 
Federal disaster assistance ever. Our country's mission, as it is after 
every national disaster, is to help our people recover from this tragedy 
and to get on with the business of everyday life. Across much of our 
country, everyday life has been interrupted by heavy snow and harsh 
winter cold. So please take care of yourselves and your neighbors who 
may need help.
    When we respond to others in need, we show that bad weather or 
earthquakes or floods can bring out, in the words of President Abraham 
Lincoln, ``the better angels of our nature.'' By the way, Abraham 
Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky 185 years ago today. He 
became President just as our country was coming apart, and he lived in 
the White House during the 4 most troubled years in American history. 
From here he appealed to the best in the American people when they were 
going through their worst. Here his hand trembled as he set his pen to 
the proclamation that declared slaves thenceforth and forever free. In 
freeing the slaves, Lincoln freed America. A war to preserve the Union 
as it was became a struggle to redeem the promise of our Declaration of 
Independence, which holds that all men are created equal.
    Lincoln went to Gettysburg, the bloodiest battlefield on our 
continent, to dedicate a cemetery for the war dead. There he asked 
America to ``resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that 
this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish 
from the Earth.'' We call Lincoln the Great Emancipator, but we might 
also call him the Great Conciliator because no person in our history 
ever did more to bring us together, this vast nation of great diversity, 
of many political and religious beliefs and all its ethnic backgrounds.
    As the Civil War neared its close, many of the victors approached 
the vanquished with pride and with punishment. But Lincoln called for 
humility and forgiveness. His second Inaugural Address contained none of 
the bitterness toward others, none of the petty partisan attacks that 
had grown so frequent in those days. ``With malice toward none; with 
charity for all,'' he said, ``with firmness in the right, as God gives 
us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to 
bind up that Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just

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and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.'' At that 
moment, it was as if Lincoln had stretched out his long arms to gather 
up the people from every region and every corner of the country to make 
our Nation whole, to shepherd it beyond the war and move it forward. 
Only one month later, he was gone, his life taken on Good Friday, 1865.
    Lincoln's legacy has touched us all down through the ages. Few now 
remember that he signed the homestead law giving 160 acres of land to 
pioneer families in search of better lives. A son of a frontier family 
himself, he signed a law to create land-grant colleges, which have 
educated America's sons and daughters ever since. Lincoln's work allowed 
people from ordinary backgrounds like his own to rise in life and 
accomplish extraordinary things. Today that work goes on. Our job here 
is to build up and strengthen the great American middle class, to give 
opportunity to all, to help our communities rid themselves from crime 
and drugs, to help families protect themselves from bankruptcy due to 
spiraling health care costs, to move people away from lifetime welfare 
toward full-time work, and to allow everyone who works hard to get ahead 
and compete and win in the new global economy.
    Still the question recurs, can we do better?--just as Lincoln asked 
us when he said, ``The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the 
stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must 
rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and 
act anew.''
    ``Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history,'' he said. ``We . . . 
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or 
insignificance can spare one or another of us. . . . We, even we here, 
hold the power and bear the responsibility. . . . We shall nobly save or 
meanly lose the last best hope of Earth. Other means may succeed; this 
could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which 
if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.'' 
Those words from Abraham Lincoln should guide our path today.
    Thanks for listening, and may God bless us all.

Note: The President spoke at 10:06 a.m. from the Oval Office at the 
White House.