On May 23, here in the United States, in an extremely important victory for patriotic force, a bipartisan group of United States Senators delivered a very significant defeat to the Bush Administration by putting down what came to be known as the "nuclear option." The event was significant not only because it meant a defeat for the Administration, but in fact, because it was a defeat for what was nothing short of an attempted coup against the Constitution of the United States.

Just a few days later, on May 29, voters in France, in what would otherwise seem to be an unrelated event, overwhelmingly defeated the newly proposed European Constitution. In and of itself, it might have been difficult for Americans to understand that, in terms of its significance. But the French vote was perhaps more than anything else, driven by the absolute disgust by the citizens of the nation of France, with the economic disasters that they have been faced with since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty Stability Pact, and the policy of globalization that it characterized.

The French events themselves had been foreshadowed a week earlier by a very significant election in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany, where the German Social Democrats suffered a significant defeat, and a defeat that was attributed, above all else, to the failed economic policies of the Schröder government there.

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This Week in History

June 21 - 27, 1848

Congressman Abraham Lincoln Assails President Polk's Veto of Internal Improvements

On June 20, 1848, Congressman Abraham Lincoln rose from his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and delivered a speech in favor of Federal funding for internal improvements. He was acting in response to President James K. Polk's veto of an internal improvements bill, in which the President stated that the Federal Government had no powers under the Constitution to fund such infrastructure projects as roads, canals, and railroads.

Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party, and a supporter of Henry Clay's policies of American System economics. In the 1836-37 session of the Illinois Legislature, when Lincoln was one of the delegates from Sangamon County, he had played a major role in developing the plan for infrastructural development in Illinois.

At that time, Illinois was still a developing frontier state, and a convention of Sangamon County voters had instructed their "Long Nine" delegates, so nicknamed because all of them were taller than usual, to vote "for a general system of internal improvements." Another convention of delegates from all of the state's counties met in Vandalia, then the state capital, and made a similar charge to the members of the legislature, specifying that the measures adopted should be "commensurate with the wants of the people."

Lincoln served on the Committee of Finance in the legislature, and helped steer the development plans through the legislature. Those plans included 1300 miles of railroad track to link the northern part of the state on Lake Michigan to the southern part on the Ohio River, and the Indiana border with the Mississippi. Every important river was to be widened, deepened, and made navigable, to improve the ability of farmers to transport their goods to market.

A canal was to be dug to connect the Illinois River to Lake Michigan, thus creating a waterway from the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario to the Welland Canal, which had been completed in 1833. From Lake Erie, ships would have been able to travel through the Great Lakes and down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and from there to the Gulf of Mexico. Since no aid was available from the Federal Government, the State of Illinois authorized the taking out of a twelve million dollar loan. Hopes were high that such a magnificent transportation network would soon bring major benefits to the rude settlements and farms of the rural areas, as well as the emerging towns. But the Panic of 1837, resulting from currency manipulation and speculation, soon plunged the nation into a severe depression and the great project had to be abandoned for a number of years.

Lincoln had told his Illinois friend Joshua Speed that he aimed at the great honor of being called the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois," referring to the Governor of New York who had built the Erie Canal with state funds when the Federal Government refused to back it. Ten years later, Lincoln was elected as a delegate to the River and Harbor Convention in Chicago. This very well-attended meeting in July of 1847 had been called to protest President Polk's veto of a bill which would have provided federal funding for internal improvements.

Lincoln was at this point the sole Whig Congressman-elect from Illinois, and as a firm supporter of internal improvements, he was invited to address the convention. It was this speech which first gave him national coverage, when Horace Greeley in the "New York Tribune" cited Lincoln's address to the delegates, writing that this "tall specimen of an Illinoisian... spoke briefly and happily."

The Thirtieth Congress assembled in December of 1847, and Lincoln was assigned to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, and to the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department. By the spring of 1848, Lincoln's talent and hard work had made him a rising force in the Whig Party. In early June, he attended the Whig National Convention in Philadelphia. After the convention nominated Zachary Taylor for President, Lincoln and three other members of the House of Representatives traveled to Wilmington, Delaware to make speeches at a ratification meeting. Lincoln was introduced as the "Lone Star of Illinois," and was loudly cheered as he predicted the coming Whig victory in November.

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