[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Page 1455]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       LINCOLN'S FAREWELL SPEECH

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to recognize the work of organizers 
in Springfield, IL, who are kicking off the national Civil War 
Sesquicentennial observation by reading President Abraham Lincoln's 
``Farewell Address'' on the 150th anniversary of its original delivery. 
The speech will be reenacted in Springfield and individuals across the 
Nation are invited to join them online for a simultaneous reading of 
it. Organizers hope to set a Guinness World Record for the most people 
reading aloud from the same document simultaneously.
  This year marks the sesquicentennial of two momentous chapters in our 
national history: President Abraham Lincoln's inauguration and the 
beginning of the Civil War. Two years ago, we celebrated the 
bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. As part of that earlier 
celebration, the Library of Congress displayed a remarkable collection 
of Lincoln artifacts. They included copies, written in Lincoln's own 
hand, of his first and second inaugural addresses and his immortal 
Gettysburg Address. Also included was a copy of President Lincoln's 
poignant ``Farewell Address'' to Springfield, his adopted home, on 
February 11, 1861. More than a thousand residents came out that day to 
wish Mr. Lincoln goodbye as he headed to Washington to become 
President. He delivered his remarks extemporaneously:

       My friend--No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my 
     feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the 
     kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have 
     lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to 
     an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is 
     buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may 
     return, with a task before me greater than that which rested 
     upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, 
     who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance 
     I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and 
     remain with you and be every where for good, let us 
     confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care 
     commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend 
     me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

  President Lincoln, of course, did not live long enough to help write 
all of the chapters of American history that he had hoped for us. It 
has fallen to each generation of Americans since him to take up that 
pencil and write the next chapters: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting 
Rights Act . . . the first African American president, another lanky 
lawyer from Illinois. But we know there are chapters that still need to 
be written.
  I urge my fellow Senators to join me in recognizing the 150th 
anniversary of President Lincoln's first inauguration, even as people 
in Springfield and around the country recite his Farewell Address.

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