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 Abraham Lincoln and Our “Unfinished Work”

What a great gift Lincoln is! In this speech I use him to inspire us and remind us that we are still in the process of perfecting the Union, still a “Tale of Two Cities,” still struggling to complete America “the unfinished work.” Lincoln serves, too, as a strong witness against the Reagan assault on government as a pernicious force. Lincoln’s own view was a balanced one using government to do things which he believed the private sector was not doing adequately, such as making ”land improvements.” Today that would mean investing in our infrastructure.

Something else was at work in the 1980’s that was troublesome and could benefit from Lincoln’s soaring intellect and penetrating rhetoric. There was a harshness growing, a loss of civility. Lincoln, who stretched his sinewy arms around his young nation and kept it from division and fragmentation with his strength and compassion, is still a powerful voice against the destructive force of racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination. I had in mind especially some new unpleasantness involving Italian-Americans that had been in the news just before the time of this address, and I talked about it specifically in the speech.

-Mario Cuomo More than Words, The Speeches of Mario Cuomo, 1993

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