Remarks at the White House Luncheon on Lincoln's Birthday

Mr. Vice President, Members of the Congress, my fellow Americans:

At the conclusion of this luncheon, I will go to the Lincoln Memorial to again pay tribute to that great man. We will have available transportation for any of you present who would care to join me.

The greatness of a country can be measured by the qualities of the men they honor• It is a tribute to the American Nation that Abraham Lincoln still towers among the objects of our reverence.

History and nature, events and character, combined perfectly in his life to give us not just a leader, but an ideal worthy to command the allegiance of a great and free society•

It is the work of historians to try and separate fact from myth, the real man from the legend. But nothing we learn can diminish Lincoln. For his importance to us is not in the facts of his life, but in what he has come to mean, and the way along which he commands us.

Almost alone among the figures of history we honor him not so much for what he did, but for what he stood for; not so much for the acts he performed, but the spirit of that ideal America he embodies. Each generation of Americans stands charged, before the court of history, to answer the challenge of Lincoln to the American will and to the American heart.

The answer to that charge is our measure, not his.

He asks, first, for the Union, whose preservation was sealed with his life. Today, more than ever, I believe that we are a house united. But let no one think that the forces of division, so vocal a few months ago, are forever silenced or crushed. Those who would sacrifice union to their own will are always alert to new opportunity. We must be equally alert to danger in the unending battle to preserve the Union.

Second, he challenges us to enlarge the liberties of our people. In the century since he ended slavery, the American Negro has struggled to awaken the conscience of this land to continuing injustice. Most of the legal barriers to equality are gone. The rest are going. We must now move on to admit more than 20 million Negro Americans as complete and equal members of American society. It must be true in fact, as well as in aspiration, that we judge and that we reward every citizen, in every aspect of life, only on his merits as a person. That is my goal as the leader of this Nation, and I believe it should be the goal of Lincoln's America.

Third, he would ask if we were true to the Declaration which gave liberty, as he said, "not alone to the people of this country but hope to the world for all future time."

The Civil War was a test, not of North or South, but a test of the idea of democracy. Freedom was not a "domestic" policy. The rights of man did not stop at the high water mark. He would prove democracy worked. Others would come along and follow.

Today, we are still the city on the hill, an example for the world. But history and our own achievements have also thrust upon us the principal responsibility for the protection of freedom on earth. We did not ask for this task• But we welcome it. For no other people, in no other time, has had so great an opportunity to work and risk for the peace and the freedom of all mankind.

It is not a burden. It is a privilege to be able to give so much for what you really believe in, and for what he really died for. And we are convinced that in our time-not by force but by the power of our idea--as Lincoln said, "The weights (shall) be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and all (shall) have an equal chance."

The man Abraham Lincoln--the clever politician, the country lawyer, the skillful executive--is forever shrouded in legend and hope. But his challenge to us sounds clearly across the years: love justice, extend liberty, remember you may be wrong, but act when you believe you're right.

Many of you, perhaps most of you, in this room know much more about Abraham Lincoln than I.

Yet I do know something of the soil from which he came, and the people he lived among.

And sometimes at night, as I struggle with terrifying problems, his presence in the dark corridors seems to be almost real.

It is then that I remember his greatest lesson. He loved the people and he drew his greatest strength from them. Though he is gone, the people are here and there. And they will give me strength, as they have to all those who have lived in this great house. Who is Abraham Lincoln?

He said: "the mystic chords of memory • . . will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

He is the "better angel" of our nature. And as long as his spirit lives in our hearts, the future holds few terrors for these United States, to which we have pledged our lives, our love, all that we hold dear--our sacred honor.

Thank you very much.