The next significant milestone in Lincoln’s political rise was the series of Lincoln-Douglas debates four years later, when the two political giants battled for Douglas’s seat in the U.S. Lincoln in Peoria will not easily be surpassed as the best account of this speech.
Lehrman spent 20 years researching and writing this book, and it shows. Lincoln in Peoria traces the context, rhetoric, and consequences of that utterance and its place in Lincoln’s rise to greatness. As Lehrman deftly explains, the Peoria speech was the foundation of Lincoln’s political ideology and rhetoric for the rest of his life: its influence is palpable in his debates with Douglas in 1858, his Cooper Union Speech in 1860, and many of his ideas and policies as president toward slavery. Lincoln later said of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that it “aroused him as he had never been before,” and indeed his response, based on moral principles rather than political expediency, transformed him from a regional party politician to a national statesman, shifting the focus of his politics away from local issues to a stance against the national expansion of slavery. It marked Lincoln’s return to politics after a five-year hiatus and indeed the beginning of his advance to the presidency. Lehrman rescued one such segment of Lincoln’s life from the shadows with his masterful Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point (Stackpole Books, 350 pages, $29.95), a study of Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Illinois, in October 1854, in response to Stephen A. Lincoln’s presidential years have drawn more scholarly attention than the period before he entered the White House some scholars argue that, despite the glut of biographies, much remains to be uncovered and examined about his early life. In 2008 and into the first months of 2009, many notable books on our 16th president have appeared, but some exceptional ones stand above the rest. Lists of the “essential” Lincoln books have been published, and one renowned Lincoln scholar has even suggested that a book be written on the worst, so readers will know which to avoid.
The deluge of books about the Great Emancipator has only increased with the bicentennial of his birth this year. Abraham Lincoln is the most written-about person in American history, and the third most in world history-ranking below only Jesus and Napoleon.
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