[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 29 (Thursday, February 12, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H1281]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ABRAHAM LINCOLN BICENTENNIAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Madam Speaker, my district includes the largest city 
in the world named for Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is the capital of 
Nebraska, a State that bore great significance to our President's 
legacy.
  On October 16, 1854, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech that changed 
the world. One of the famed Lincoln-Douglass debates, this 3-hour 
speech challenged the Kansas-Nebraska Act and presented arguably the 
most thorough moral, legal, and political argument against slavery to 
that date. He deplored Stephen Douglass' invocations of the quote `` 
`sacred right' of taking slaves to Nebraska.'' He spoke passionately 
against the act, declaring:
  ``I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of 
slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of 
its just influence in the world--enables the enemies of free 
institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites--causes the 
real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because 
it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war 
with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.''
  Were Abraham Lincoln to not have spoken these words, my State may 
have suffered a past of grave injustice. Nebraskans are thankful for 
his stand for the principle enshrined in the preamble to our 
Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal.
  Abraham Lincoln's legacy, 200 years after his birth, is now deeply 
rooted in our American tradition. He led our Nation through our 
greatest and most profound crisis and strengthened our country.

                              {time}  1645

  Though Lincoln's work at healing a fractured Nation was tragically 
and reprehensibly cut short, countless Americans have carried the 
mantle set forth in his remarkable orations. We work, as Lincoln said, 
``to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all Nations.'' Even today, and even while our 
Nation is under many pressures at the moment, it is a testament to 
Lincoln's legacy that the world still turns to us to lead on critical 
human rights issues.
  Madam Speaker, as a Representative of Nebraska, as a resident of 
Lincoln, as an American citizen, deeply moved by the grand yet simple 
ideal of equality, I am honored to stand here today and pay tribute to 
President Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

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