Mario M. Cuomo
Mario M. Cuomo (b. 1932) served three terms as governor of New York State, from 1983 through 1994. The following excerpt is from a speech he gave before the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield, Missouri, on February 12, 1986.
Lincoln believed, with every fibre of his being, that this place, America, could offer a dream to all mankind, different than any other in the annals of history. More generous, more compassionate, more inclusive. No one knew better than Lincoln, our sturdiness, the ability of most of us to make it on our own given the chance. But at the same time, no one knew better the idea of family, the idea that unless we helped one another, there were some who would never make it.
One person climbs the ladder of personal ambition, reaches his dream, and then turns—and pulls the ladder up. Another reaches the place he has sought, turns, and reaches down for the person behind him. With Lincoln, it was that process of turning and reaching down, that commitment to keep lifting people up the ladder, which defined the American character, stamping us forever with a mission that reached even beyond our borders to embrace the world. Lincoln’s belief in America, in the American people, was broader, deeper, more daring than any other person’s of his age—and perhaps, ours too. And this is the near-unbelievable greatness of the man: that with that belief, he not only led us, he created us.
His personal mythology became our national mythology. It is as if Homer not only chronicled the siege of Troy, but conducted the siege as well. As if Shakespeare set his playwrighting aside to lead the English against the Armada. Because Lincoln embodied his age in his actions and in his words.
Words, even and measured, hurrying across three decades, calling us to our destiny. Words he prayed, and troubled over—more than a million words in his speeches and writings. Words that chronicled the search for his own identity as he searched for a nation’s identity. Words that were, by turns, as chilling as the night sky and as assuring as home. Words his reason sharpened into steel, and his heart softened into an embrace. Words filled with all the longings of his soul and of his century. Words wrung from his private struggle, spun to capture the struggle of a nation. Words out of his own pain to heal that struggle. Words of retribution, but never of revenge. Words that judged, but never condemned. Words that pleaded, cajoled for the one belief—that the promise must be kept—that the dream must endure and grow, until it embraces everyone. Words ringing down into the present. All the hope and the pain of that epic caught, somehow, by his cadences: the tearing away, the binding together, the leaving behind, the reaching beyond. As individuals, as a people, we are still reaching up, for a better job, a better education, even for the stars, just as Lincoln did. But because of Lincoln, we do it in a way that is unique to this world.
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What other people on earth have ever claimed a quality of character that resided not in a way of speaking, dressing, dancing, praying, but in an idea? What other people on earth have ever refused to set the definitions of their identity by anything other than that idea? No, we have not learned quickly or easily that the dream of America endures only so long as we keep faith with the struggle to include. But Lincoln—through his words and his works—has etched that message forever into our consciousness.
Lincoln showed us, for all time, what unites us. He taught us that we cannot rest until the promise of equality and opportunity embraces every region, every race, every religion, every nationality,…and every class. Until it includes, “the penniless beginner” and the “poor man seeking his chance.”1
In his time Lincoln saw that as long as one in every seven Americans was enslaved, our identity as a people was hostage to that enslavement. He faced that injustice. He fought it. He gave his life to see it righted.
Time and again, since then, we have had to face challenges that threatened to divide us. And time and again, we have conquered them. We reached out—hesitantly at times, sometimes only after great struggle—but always we reached out, to include impoverished immigrants, the farmer and the factory worker, women, the disabled.
To all those whose only assets were their great expectations, America found ways to meet those expectations, and to create new ones. Generations of hard-working people moved into the middle class and beyond. We created a society as open and free as any on earth. And we did it Lincoln’s way: by founding that society on a belief in the boundless enterprise of the American people. Always, we have extended the promise, moving toward the light, toward our declared purpose as a people: “to form a more perfect union,” to overcome all that divides us because we believe that ancient wisdom that Lincoln believed: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”2 Step-by-step, our embrace grows wider. The old bigotries seem to be dying. The old stereotypes and hatreds, that denied so many their full share of an America they helped build, have gradually given way to acceptance, fairness and civility.
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But still, great challenges remain. Suddenly, ominously, a new one has emerged. In Lincoln’s time, one of every seven Americans was a slave. Today, for all our affluence and might, despite what every day is described as our continuing economic recovery, nearly one in every seven Americans lives in poverty, not in chains—because Lincoln saved us from that—but trapped in a cycle of despair that is its own enslavement. Today, while so many of us do so well, one of every two minority children is born poor, many of them to be oppressed for a lifetime by inadequate education and the suffocating influence of broken families and social disorientation. Our identity as a people is hostage to the grim facts of more than thirty-three million Americans for whom equality and opportunity is not yet an attainable reality, but only an illusion.
Some people look at these statistics and the suffering people behind them, and deny them, pretending instead we are all one great “shining city on a hill.” Lincoln told us for a lifetime—and for all time to come—that there can be no shining city when one in seven of us is denied the promise of the declaration. He tells us today that we are justly proud of all that we have accomplished, but that for all our progress, for all our achievement, for all that so properly makes us proud, we have no right to rest, content. Nor justification for turning from the effort, out of fear or lack of confidence.
We have met greater challenges with fewer resources. We have faced greater perils with fewer friends. It would be a desecration of our belief and an act of ingratitude for the good fortune we have had, to end the struggle for inclusion because it is over for some of us.
So, this evening, we come to pay you our respects, Mr. Lincoln. Not just by recalling your words and revering your memory, which we do humbly and with great pleasure. This evening, we offer you more Mr. President: we offer you what you have asked us for, a continuing commitment to live your truth, to go forward painful step by painful step, enlarging the greatness of this nation with patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people.
Because—as you have told us Mr. President—there is no better or equal hope in the world. Thank you.
(1986)