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Lincoln at Peoria |  | Author: Lewis E. Lehrman
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 282655
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1St Edition
Pages: 350
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0811703614
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.7092
EAN: 9780811703611
ASIN: 0811703614
Publication Date: July 4, 2008
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Product Description
Lincoln at Peoria explains how Lincoln's speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854, was the turning point in the development of his antislavery campaign and his political career and thought. Here, Lincoln detailed his opposition to slavery's extension and his determination to defend America's Founding document from those who denied that the Declaration of Independence applied to black Americans.
Students of Abraham Lincoln know the canon of his major speeches from his Lyceum Speech of 1838 to his final remarks delivered from a White House window, days before he was murdered in 1865. Less well-known are the two extraordinary speeches given at Springfield and Peoria two weeks apart in 1854. They marked Mr. Lincoln's reentry into the politics of Illinois and, as he could not know, his preparation for the presidency in 1861. These Lincoln addresses catapulted him into the debates over slavery which dominated Illinois and national politics for the rest of the decade. Lincoln delivered the substance of these arguments several times certainly in Springfield on October 4, 1854, for which there are only press reports. A longer version came twelve days later in Peoria.
To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the Peoria speech of October 16, 1854. It forms the foundation of his politics and principles in the 1850s and in his presidency.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, one of the most explosive congressional statutes of American history, repealed the prohibition on slavery in that section of the Louisiana Territory, 36 degree and 30 minute parallel, a restriction on the spread of slavery agreed upon by North and South in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by the famous Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, inaugurated an incendiary chapter in the slavery debates of the early American Republic. In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln launched his antislavery campaign. All of his moral and historical arguments opposed any further extension of slavery in the American republic, founded, as he argued, upon the Declaration of Independence. That all men are created equal, with the inalienable right to liberty, was, for Lincoln, a universal principle that Americans must not ignore.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 Lincoln at Peoria January 25, 2010
David M. Keck (Johnstown, Ohio)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is well organized, very thorough, and a faithful representation of the facts regarding Lincoln's restart of his political career and, in particular, an analysis of Stephen Douglas's advocacy of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This book should be read in conjunction with a biography of Lincoln, perhaps by Guelzo or Holzer.
Undertanding Lincoln and the ideas he championed June 30, 2009
Allen Roth (New York, New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Lewis Lehrman has written an informative intellectual history of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's political activities prove the adage that ideas have consequences. While the Peoria Speech is central to the book, Lehrman has produced a valuable study of the political ideas that led to the Civil War and the political leaders who espoused these ideas.
Along with Lincoln, we get memorable portraits of Senator Douglas, Alexander Stephens, and many of the central political figures of the day. While I studied American History this book filled a lot of gaps in my education. For example, before reading this book I did not appreciate Lincoln's insistence that his way was fulfilling the beliefs of the nation's founders and not a radical break from the past. Lehrman's mastery of his subject is constantly on display for the benefit of the reader.
If you want to delve into the ideas and personalities of the public figures in the lead up to the Civil War this book is a must read.And along the way you will be transported to a bygone era when politicians discussed and debated important issues and audiences listened for hours on end. In other words the pre-sound bite era.
 Review of Lincoln At Peoria February 7, 2009
Dennis W. Dillard (Peoria, IL)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Lincoln At Peoria, The Turning Point
by Lewis E. Lehrman
published by Stackpole Books
2008
"Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution?" Mr. Lincoln, Peoria October 16, 1854.
Lincoln at Peoria is a stout tome of 412 pages, adorned by 808 footnotes and 14 pages of bibliography. The complete transcription of the three-hour speech in question occupies 51 of the pages.
At first glance, this work is a detailed analysis of what the Mr. Lehrman considers the defining point in the political career of Abraham Lincoln. He proceeds by investigating the development of Lincoln's political views leading to that precise and settled presentation at Peoria, dissecting the speech in great detail, and thoroughly demonstrating that Lincoln was guided by the foundations established therewith, from that point on until his death.
Surprisingly, what emerged for this reader was a distilled and simple picture of the temperament and philosophy of Abraham Lincoln. Contrary to some who would claim his mantle in our times, the author paints Lincoln as a conserver, pointing out that he was a "self-described conservative." Although he would use harsh means as President in order to save the Union, Lincoln was neither a radical nor a revolutionary seeking to set the nation on some new path - on the contrary, he was a purist and reformer, always urging a return to first and foundational principles. And he found those principles foremost in the Declaration of Independence, which he placed on an almost scriptural pedestal.
"In Lincoln's judgment, the objective moral order of the Declaration of Independence was timeless, universal, and immutable." Lehrman, pg 239
Over and over from Peoria, to Gettysburg and beyond, Mr. Lincoln spoke in hallowed tones of a "nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In Lincoln?s view, the essence of Liberty was the freedom to enjoy the fruits of ones own labor; that without this Liberty, Equality was left an empty platitude. And so Lincoln repeatedly called the nation to return to lofty vision of the Founders, with a new resolve to bring that vision to fulfillment.
Lehrman shows Lincoln to be an international man as well who spoke not only to the nation, but to people everywhere. Lincoln saw the temptation to profit from another mans toil as a universal human temptation. He decried the failure of the nation to live up to its professed ideals in the eyes of a watching world.
"I hate it (indifference to slavery) because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites - causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty - criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest." Mr. Lincoln, Peoria October 16, 1854.
Lehrman declares that Lincoln believed in the objective moral order; that this was the real difference between Lincoln and his main antagonist, that other famous Democratic Senator from Illinois, Stephen Douglas. Douglas could never follow Lincoln from the plane of rights to the higher question of right and wrong.
"If you admit that slavery is wrong," Douglas "cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong." Mr. Lincoln, Galesburg October 7, 1858.
So in this day when many would claim the right to the mantle of Abraham Lincoln, this book will help us to see the real Lincoln with clarity and to deny that mantle to those who may bare some resemblance to the image, but do not share the essence, of the man.
"Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right," back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of "necessity." Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south - let all Americans - let all lovers of liberty everywhere - join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations." Mr. Lincoln, Peoria October 16, 1854.
http://www.cirtl.org/lincoln_at_peoria.html
How to Understand Lincoln December 8, 2008
George Gilder (Tyringham, MA USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am not a historian and have never fully grasped the greatness of Abraham Lincoln amid the towers of tomes that loom over this man and cast him in the multifarious shadows of his eminent biographers, impersonators, and iconographers. The eminent polymath Lewis Lehrman here has made the splendid strategic decision to stand back and let the man himself speak, while providing a rich and illuminating, wise and comprehensive study of the historic context. As a result the reader not only senses, and almost directly experiences, the greatness of Lincoln but also can grasp how a speech and a historic moment converged to propel this unlikely man to the center of our nation's supreme crisis and then to the pantheon of our greatest men. By focusing intensely on a single historic moment, Lehrman has achieved a more profound and convincing image of greatness than historians who approach their subject across wider paths of time and space.
At the heart of the matter is an issue that grows ever more acute--the meaning of "popular sovereignty," vaunted by Stephen Douglas as the answer to Lincoln's assertion that democratic majorities, however large and confident, have no right to enslave human beings. At the time the key issue was actual slavery. Today the demagogues of "popular sovereignty" favor a new and more subtle enslavement of the most productive citizens by majorities "spreading the wealth" to themselves. Lehrman shows that the Peoria speech and crisis remains a pivotal expression of both the vital promise and the continuing perils of popular majoritarian democracy. Lincoln understood deeply that democracy can only thrive in the context of an enduring moral and legal order affirmed by the religious truths of the Declaration of Independence.
A seminal and scholarly reference September 4, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point is an in-depth, historical and critical analysis of Abraham Lincoln's three-hour speech delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. The speech would come to mark a crucial turning point in Lincoln's political career, and therefore the history of America. Chapters give extensive historical context and frame of reference to Lincoln's speech, which firmly established his opposition to the further extension of slavery in the American republic and embodying Lincoln's anti-slavery campaign. A seminal and scholarly reference, Lincoln at Peoria is especially recommended for college library and American history shelves.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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