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Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point Hardcover – June 13, 2008

by Lewis E. Lehrman (Author)

4.6 36 ratings

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The pivotal speech that changed the course of Lincoln's career and America's history
Complete examination of the speech, including the full text delivered in 1854 in Peoria, Illinois
To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the extraordinary antislavery speech Lincoln delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. This three-hour address marked the turning point in Lincoln's political pilgrimage, dramatically altering his political career and, as a result, the history of America.
Lincoln opposed any further extension of slavery in the American republic, holding to the Declaration of Independence's universal principle that "all men are created equal." In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln launched his antislavery campaign, delivering speeches in Springfield and Peoria.
The Peoria address was rigorous, logical, and grounded in historical research. It marked Lincoln's reentry into politics and his preparation for the presidency in 1861. The speech catapulted Lincoln into the national debates over slavery and into national politics for the rest of his life.
Though historians and biographers have noted its importance, Lincoln's speech at Peoria has not received the attention it deserves. Lincoln at Peoria offers a complete examination of the speech that changed the course of our nation.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Stackpole Books
Publication date

June 13, 2008
Dimensions

6 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0811703614
ISBN-13

978-0811703611
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this careful, balanced look at Abraham Lincoln's stirring 1854 Peoria, Ill., speech, writer and historian Lehrman finds a "prelude to greatness" that put the little-known lawyer and politician on the path to national prominence while laying the intellectual groundwork for his presidency. The subject was slavery, already the great question of 19th century America, recently reignited with the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed earlier anti-slavery laws for certain new territories. Arguing that the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence extended to African-Americans, Lincoln took an abolitionist position daring for any politician with national ambitions (though he did not go so far as to advocate for full social or political equality). Lehrman also considers Lincoln's Illinois nemesis, Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, sponsor of the new Kansas-Nebraska Act who spoke at Peoria before Lincoln as a stalwart booster of "the rights of whites to enslave blacks." Ably building on the drama of Lincoln's anti-slavery efforts through subsequent years, culminating in his ascent to the presidency, Lehrman's detailed chronicle, rich in first-person accounts, lays out the case that from his earliest public forays, Lincoln was no ordinary leader.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Lewis E. Lehrman is dedicated to reviving the teaching of American history in its schools and colleges. Mr. Lehrman has written and lectured widely on American history and economics and has written for publications such as Harper's, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the New York Sun, and Policy Review. He also writes for the Lincoln Institute, which has created award-winning websites on the sixteenth president. With Richard Gilder, Mr. Lehrman built the Gilder Lehrman Collection of original historical manuscripts and documents to teach American history from primary sources, now on deposit for public access at the New-York Historical Society. He was presented the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2005 for his work in American history and is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Lincoln Forum.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stackpole Books; First Edition (June 13, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811703614
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811703611
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,343,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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4.6 36 ratings

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Lewis E. Lehrman

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LEWIS E. LEHRMAN has written widely about history, economic and monetary policy in publications such as Harper's, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, Crisis, New York Post, Greenwich Time, The American Spectator, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, National Review and The New York Times. His writings about monetary economics earned him an appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the Presidential Gold Commission in 1981. Along with Congressman Ron Paul, Lewis Lehrman collaborated on a minority report of the commission, which was published as The Case for Gold (1982). He is also the author of The True Gold Standard: A Monetary Reform Plan without Official Reserve Currencies (2012) and Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (2008). He edited the 2012 edition of Money and the Coming World Order.

In April of 1987, Lehrman joined Morgan Stanley & Company, investment bankers, as a Senior Advisor and a Director of Morgan Stanley Asset Management. In 1988, he became a Managing Director of the firm. He is presently Senior Partner of L. E. Lehrman & Co., an investment firm he established.

Lehrman has been named to the advisory board of the American Principles Project’s Gold Standard initiative. He heads The Gold Standard Now – a project of The Lehrman Institute. Established in 1972, The Lehrman Institute is a public policy foundation focused on history, economic and foreign policy, education, and local communities. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation and New-York Historical Society. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council.

Lehrman received the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2005 for his teaching and studies of American history. In 2010, he was awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship.

Lehrman earned his B.A. from Yale where he became a Carnegie Teaching Fellow on the Yale faculty and an M.A. from Harvard where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Lehrman has been awarded honorary degrees from Babson College (Babson Park, MA) where he was made a member of its Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame; Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA); Lincoln College (Lincoln, IL), Marymount University (Arlington, VA); and Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA).

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James V. Trotta

Out standing book on Lincoln, his struggle with slavery.

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2013

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This is without a doubt, one of the best books written on Lincoln & our American history. It gives the reader a very good in site on the politics of that day, which don't differ very much from our present day politics.
Lincoln, a self made man of his day, should be a very good example, to our youth today. The book also shines a bright light on the problems that country struggled with the slavery issue.

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arthur banner

A big speech in a small town

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2014

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On October 15, 1854, Abraham Lincoln delivered a big speech in a small town in Illinois called Peoria. The speech railed against the newly enacted Kansas-Nebraska act, designed by Stephen Douglas, a prominent senator from Illinois. The aim of the act was to allow popular sovereignty to determine whether newly admitted states would be free or slave. The speech in question was only one of many delivered by Lincoln, most of which have been long forgotten. Sensing its importance, Lincoln prevented the speech from falling into obscurity by publishing it himself. It was destined to have a major impact on the course of the nation and was responsible for Lincoln's rise to becoming a major political figure.
This book is mainly about that speech, but actually much more. Lehrman describes what led up to the speech, the numerous compromises which kept the nation together and which allowed the nation to exist half free and half slave. The end of the book, termed the Coda, describes the fate of the nation as a function of Lincoln's leadership.
The speech was one of a series of encounters between Lincoln and Douglas that dealt with the issue of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. These speeches would culminate in the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. The effect of the Kansas -Nebraska act was nullification of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which limited slavery to Missouri and the areas of the country situated south of its lower border.
The Missouri compromise was only one of several compromises designed to deal with the issue of slavery. Much of the book is concerned with a description of the various compromises which allowed slavery to co-exist in a country bifurcated into free and slave states. This history is a complicated one and is difficult to follow. Lewis Lehrman is a good author and is continually cognizant of his readers, guiding them through the minefields of history and legalities. He takes several steps to help the reader navigate the book. He supplies a map illustrating how the sequential compromises affected the presence of slavery in the areas destined to become states. Although the map is complicated and requires study, the diligent reader is rewarded with a fuller appreciation of the role of compromise in keeping the nation balanced between free and slave sates. He also supplies a list of chapters with a description helpful to the reader. Finally, for those who get lost in time, there is a helpful chronology appended to the end of the book.

Although the speech is appended to the book in its entirety, the autghor provides a whole chapter, summarizing the speech and commenting on its significance. The Peoria speech reflected Lincoln's struggle with slavery, especially in the manner by which it impacted the meaning of the nation. He refers back to the Declaration of Independence and to the sacred beginnings of the country, when patriots shed their blood so that the nation might be born. The ostensible purpose of the document was to outline the grievances of the colonists against the king and to thus justify revolution. However, Lincoln entertained an alternate interpretation of the document as describing the ethos of the nation, the equality of all men. The document was thus ambiguous as to its meaning. This ambiguity set up the conflict between Lincoln and Douglas. Douglas believed that equality meant the equality of all Englishmen, while Lincoln interpreted equality in the manner that Locke did, equality of opportunity, and the right of men to the fruits of their own labor. Neither man interpreted the meaning as social equality. When Douglas accused Lincoln of these latter, unpopular sentiments, it was done for political reasons. Both the readers and Douglas knew he was being disingenuous.

The book ends with a chapter termed Coda. A coda is a musical term describing a change in the musical themes, allowing a denouement in the musical efforts. The coda of the book looks beyond 1854, to the ultimate fate of the nation. Lincoln's presidency represented a series of turning points. When he assumed the presidency he directed his energies at the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln was conciliatory toward the South, particularly in regards to slavery. He chose, instead to emphasize the importance of the nation. He turned to the meaning of the country, recalling its sacred founding. He referred, to "The mystic cords of memory... and patriot's graves." When volunteers were requested to secure the nation, the people responded in the thousands. Many died for their country, defending the flags of their units and many were buried in the flag of the nation. As the war progressed, Lincoln embraced emancipation as a military necessity rather than a sacred principle. With the end of the war in sight, the meaning of the war seemed to shift more toward emancipation. However, in the second inaugural address he admitted his uncertainty that slavery was the ultimate cause of the war. He finally deferred to God, "The Almighty has its own purposes."
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Most of us struggle to understand Abraham Lincoln. The reason for this is that we start from the end, as if no other ending was possible. We see Lincoln as a marble statue, martyred to free slaves. Kierkegaard stated" life is lived going forward but is understood looking backward." In this book, Lewis Lehrman attempts to explain Lincoln, by looking backward. To do this he focuses on the speech given in Peoria in 1854 but then goes on to the complicated history subsequent to the speech. We forget that it is contingencies that determine the end, and it is these contingencies that the author deals with in an expert fashion.
Lincoln was more about Union and the love of country than emancipation. Never the less, Lincoln was not indifferent to slavery. He was always opposed to slavery, but not in the emotional manner of Harriet Beecher Stowe or the rage of Frederick Douglas, but with the disappointment of a man who saw slavery as a stain on the fabric of America. He was forced to live with the opposing views of the nation, but for a time avoided despair, by taking solace in compromise. He insisted that he was more than willing to tolerate the existence of slavery, as long as it did not spread in the territories.
The Kansas- Nebraska Act, ended compromise and thus doomed the nation to the tragedy of insurrection and civil war. In the second inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to come to grips with the Civil War and especially its relationship to slavery. He surmised that the cause of the war had something to do with slavery, but only to the extent that the south refused to compromise.
It is ironic that Lincoln was martyred for slavery and in so doing we remember him more as the great emancipator rather than the man who held he Union together. One suspects that he would have preferred to be remembered as the savior of the nation rather than as the man who freed the slaves. He would rather that slavery would have extinguished itself through lack of necessity than through civil war. This notion is in fact the meaning of Lincoln and it helps us to understand the man he was. We have Lewis Lehrman to thank for this insight.

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P. A. R. S.

Very interesting

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2013

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I really enjoyed reading this book. I learned a lot about our President Lincoln.
I plan to keep it for source material. The writer made no real claims about discovering
new information, he just presented old information in a way that cause us to
rethink some of Lincolns words, helping us to put them into perspective.

There were times when I felt I was traveling with Lincoln has he verbally tackled Stephen Douglas.

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C. R. Keenan

From country lawyer to great emancipator

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2013

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I had read this before and wanted it as a gift for a good friend. But I re-read Lehrman's book & saw the line between savvy country lawyer to the great emancipator. Outstanding.

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Jay H. Sanzo

Lincoln At Peoria

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2011

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It was a difficult book to get through at times, still the same it was an interesting restoration of this critical Lincoln address.

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2015

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Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2012

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Because a lot of the books on Lincoln tend to be very heavy reads where there is a lot of facts to slug through and the speech patterns of the day are less than complimentary to today's more slang-filled language, I am always cautious when I choose a book having anything to do with Lincoln. I was surprised and ultimately delighted by this book that was a much lighter read. This book was focused mostly on one speech Lincoln gave in Peoria, and I thought the author did an excellent job of giving the facts without putting too much of his own opinion in the text. Although this was not intended to be thrilling, in some ways it was. The idea that one man could set in motion so many important decisions that still affect us today, is sometimes lost on this generation. Back at a time when things were somewhat simpler than they are now, with regard to technology and the advent of the quickly spreading word, it is doubly amazing. I liked that the author outlined his intentions before the first chapter and made clear for the reader what he intended when he wrote this book. In the end, I felt like I learned a few things I didn't know before and at the same time, found myself entertained as well. I would recommend this book.

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GrowUpDaveyboy

It's almost everything you need to know.

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2022

I am an Illinois boy, born and bred. As such, I have always had what I consider to be a natural fascination with, and a reverence for Abraham Lincoln. A consequence is that I have a couple shelves of books on the subject of this great man. Since this book was first published, I have told others with any interest, that this is the best book I have ever read about A Lincoln. It provides illumination on his thoughts, thought process, and motivations related to the sin of slavery, that floats above all other books one might come across. I love this book. For Christmas 2022, I have ordered a copy for my now-grown son, Lincoln. This book provides insight to A Lincoln's magnificent blending of clear objectivity, his painfully reasoned subjectivity, and his rare level of personal courage.

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