[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 30 (Tuesday, February 14, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S379-S380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Abraham Lincoln

  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, during the Civil War, Walt Whitman took 
stock of Abraham Lincoln's appearance. The President had a face, the 
poet wrote, like a ``Hoosier Michelangelo.'' But Whitman sensed that 
underneath the lines and the crags were wells of wisdom and tact 
perfectly suited to the President, hard-earned long ago.
  You see, Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as one of our country's 
greatest Presidents, a visionary and an inspiring leader who appealed 
to the highest American ideals and moved our Nation toward a more 
perfect Union.
  Sunday marks the 214th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Even 
today, historians still wrestle with the question, how is a man of such 
character forged? The answer, I think, can be found in Southern 
Indiana, near the Ohio River. In 1860, when asked for details of his 
youth by a biographer, Abraham Lincoln was uncooperative. It could all, 
he said, ``be condensed into a single sentence--the short and simple 
annals of the poor.''
  ``That's all you or any one can make of it,'' Lincoln insisted. But, 
if you will pardon me, I would like to make a little more of it. My 
colleagues from Kentucky will no doubt point out that Lincoln's birth 
occurred in their Commonwealth, and as my colleagues from Illinois will 
likely remind you, when Abraham Lincoln departed for the White House, 
it was from their State. I will give them this: Lincoln was indeed born 
in Kentucky, and he did make his name in Illinois. But Abraham Lincoln 
was a Hoosier. ``It was there I grew up,'' he recalled of Southern 
Indiana. It was there in Spencer County ``I grew to my present enormous 
height,'' he once joked.

[[Page S380]]

  True, there is little left that Abraham Lincoln would recognize in 
our State today. There are just reminders of a once unbroken forest 
among the low hills; the soil--in it the graves of loved ones; and a 
great river separating north from south. In what does remain, though, 
we can still see where his character was formed, what prepared him for 
the trials to come.
  The Lincolns arrived the same year Indiana became a State. It was 
still the frontier line. The woods were full of bears and the night air 
alive with the roar of mountain lions. This was a hard and 
heartbreaking life, uncertain and often short. Those years of Abraham 
Lincoln's life were characterized by loss--first the loss of his mother 
Nancy and later his sister Sarah--and by constant labor which he grew 
to so dislike. Schooling was scarce. Opportunities for self-improvement 
were few. By his own account, he had no more than a year of formal 
education.
  Decades later, when Abraham Lincoln recalled his life in Indiana, he 
wrote, ``My childhood home I see again, and sadden with the view,'' but 
he also wrote that among the memories, there was ``pleasure in it, 
too.'' There were happy days in the Little Pigeon Creek community, 
captivating friends with his homespun stories, and there was the love 
of a stepmother who nurtured his curiosity.
  The sparse schooling he had taught him to read and to write. In fact, 
he pored over what few books he could find: the Bible, a tattered 
biography of George Washington borrowed from a neighbor, and later a 
collection of Indiana law containing the Declaration of Independence 
and the Constitution of the United States.
  There was the Ohio River. That river was a gateway of possibilities 
and a point of departure to the outside world. Lincoln earned his first 
half dollar ferrying passengers on the river. He first saw the horror 
of slavery traveling down it.
  By the time Abe Lincoln and his family left the Little Pigeon Creek 
community in 1830, Lincoln had spent a quarter of his life in Indiana. 
He crossed the Wabash River into Illinois, a grown man whose heart, 
touched by grief, was kind, generous, and strong; who could spin a yarn 
like no other; whose intellect far outpaced his meager education. Of 
course, he carried with him a great reverence for our founding's 
promise of freedom and a burning desire to rise in life.
  Although Lincoln was loathe to speak of it as he grew older, those 14 
years in Spencer County, IN--the sad and the joyous--shaped him. The 
qualities that saved the Union in its time of greatest peril were 
forged in the Indiana wilderness.
  In March of 1865, only a few weeks before Lincoln's death, he 
addressed the 140th Indiana Regiment. The soldiers had recently 
captured a Confederate flag in North Carolina, which the President gave 
to Indiana Governor Oliver Morton. Lincoln reminded those Hoosiers 
assembled that he was raised in their State, and he praised their 
Hoosier valor. But he was ever mindful of the Union. He said that day, 
``I would not wish to compliment Indiana above other states.''
  Well, Mr. President, for whatever it is worth, I do, because Lincoln 
belongs to all Americans, but Hoosiers can claim a special connection 
with Abraham Lincoln.
  So, on the occasion of his birth, we once again celebrate the life 
and legacy of this remarkable Hoosier. He represents the best of us. He 
was one of us.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.