The country celebrated the 204th anniversary of Abraham
Lincoln's birth this week. Lincoln has been much in the news
lately, with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation
Proclamation last month and with the widespread popularity of
Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated movie named after the 16th
president. Additionally, controversy now swirls around the
inaccuracy of the votes cast by Connecticut’s congressional
delegation in the movie — a fact that prompted Congressman Joe
Courtney to write a protest letter to director Steven Spielberg.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862
following the Battle of Antietam. Its issuance did exact a
political price in the Congressional elections of 1862, as it
cost his party 28 seats in the House of Representatives. This
loss of Republican influence in the House would make passage of
the 13th Amendment there very difficult, as Steven Spielberg's
movie Lincoln dramatizes so well. Passage of the 13th Amendment
in the Senate, however, was much easier. I