Lincoln at Peoria
The Turning Point

by Lewis E. Lehrman

Excerpts on Lincoln at Peoria by Lewis E. Lehrman from essay in Fall 2009 Claremont Review of Books by Harry V. Jaffa, a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, who is the author of numerous articles and books, including his widely acclaimed study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (University of Chicago Press, 1959).

"[W]e are indebted to Lewis Lehrman for focusing our attention on what the angels have always known...Now, Lehrman has given us in Lincoln at Peoria a full-length treatment of the 1854 speech that marked Lincoln's initial confrontation with the fateful question of slavery expansion...The subtitle of Lew Lehrman's book is The Turning Point. The Peoria speech was a turning point in Lincoln's life and career because it represented a turning point in the life of the nation...Lincoln at Peoria is a salutary, forceful reminder of the future president's powerful entry into the political struggle that led into the Civil War. The importance Lehrman finds in the Peoria speech cannot be exaggerated.... Lehrman not only elaborates, carefully and precisely, its political and philosophical doctrines, but he traces their presence through the other speeches, as well as into the presidency. It is a book on the whole of Lincoln…. As Lew Lehrman so convincingly shows, there is nothing virtually present at Gettysburg that is not actually present at Peoria…. It is part of Lehrman's achievement to make us aware of the extent of what Lincoln accomplished at Peoria...We are greatly indebted to Lewis Lehrman's superb book for helping us to understand why no list, however short, of the greatest speeches of all time could omit Lincoln at Peoria."

Publisher's Weekly

“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slavery, already the great question of 19th century America, recently reignited with the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed earlier anti slavery laws for certain new territories.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.”

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