160th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Election to the United States House of Representatives

160TH ANNIVERSARY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Leo Tolstoy said of Abraham Lincoln that ``His example is universal and will last thousands of years ..... He was bigger than his country--bigger than all the Presidents together ..... and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives.''

Abraham Lincoln has been known and admired through the generations--and around the world. But Abraham Lincoln is known primarily for his presidency and his leadership of the United States through the dark days of the Civil War. We recall his unwavering commitment to the ``American experiment'' in democracy and his refusal to allow the national Union to fail, regardless of the odds against him.

Few people remember, though, that Abraham Lincoln was also a Member of Congress at one time. Today, August 3, in fact, marks the 160th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's election to a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives. I also had the privilege of representing the 20th Congressional District of Illinois as a member of the House for 14 years.

There is a reason few people remember Lincoln's service in Congress. Frankly, his one term, in the 30th Congress, which sat from December 1847 to March of 1849, was rather unremarkable. He was a young country lawyer who served with the likes of John Quincy Adams in the House and Daniel Webster and John Calhoun in the Senate. Most of his colleagues viewed him as a Westerner of average talent.

He was a conscientious and hard-working Member, though, which isn't particularly surprising. He served on various committees, he voted on the floor of the House in nearly all of the rollcall votes during his term, and he corresponded faithfully with his constituents.

His most famous contribution to the political and policy debates of his term--criticism of President James Polk for the Nation's involvement in the Mexican war--earned him scorn and disfavor back in Illinois where the war had been popular. Illinois Democrats called Lincoln, himself a Whig at the time, a disgrace.

Lincoln left Congress and returned to his legal practice, arguing cases in country courthouses of Illinois' Eighth Judicial Circuit, and thinking he had no future in politics.

On the contrary, Lincoln's time walking the Halls of this building introduced him to the issues on the national political stage. The Congress in which he served debated the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prevented the spread of slavery into territories newly acquired from Mexico. Those debates exposed Lincoln to the divisiveness and explosiveness of the issue that severely tried his presidency a decade and a half later and nearly destroyed the country. His time in Congress also produced personal and political connections that served him years later as President and Commander-in-Chief.

Today, we mark the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's election to the House of Representatives as the beginning of this great man's ascent on the national political stage. In February 2009, the Nation will mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Congress established the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission to help our Nation mark this milestone. I am privileged to cochair the Commission along with Congressman RAY LAHOOD and Lincoln Scholar Harold Holzer--we like to call ourselves ``a team of rivals.'' We have been working diligently to ensure that a ``fitting and proper'' commemoration is planned. I am pleased to report that a number of our goals have already been met--the authorization of new penny designs in the bicentennial year and the issuance of a commemorative coin, for example. Other educational, scholarly, cultural, and historical events are in various stages of planning--both here in the United States and abroad.

After President Lincoln's untimely death, Edwin M. Stanton said, ``Now he belongs to the ages.'' Mr. President, today we remember Abraham Lincoln's service in the House, his leadership during our Nation's most perilous time, and his legacy of freedom, democracy, and equal opportunity. Even great life begins with a series of small but important steps. Let us keep working to carry out Abraham Lincoln's vision in our day.

http://thomas.loc.gov/