August 13,1859 was a hot day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The settlement was on the western boundary of the state, just across the Missouri River from the Nebraska village of Omaha. A politician from the neighboring state of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, went to Concert Hall to make a speech. It attracted a big crowd because of Lincoln's prominence after the previous year's Lincoln-Douglas debates and the keen interest in the following year's presidential election. Lincoln was a full-time politician and a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. The local editor called Lincoln's speech - never recorded - one that "set forth the true principles of the Republican party."
-Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869
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